In 2018, Ardmore Shipping and Anglo Ardmore Ship Management hosted the first Anglo Ardmore Crew Conference in India. It proved a valuable opportunity for staff and seafarers to unite and gain new insights, brainstorm ideas, and join training sessions. This year, due to the pandemic, the Crew Conference was entirely virtual, allowing colleagues from around the world to join one main event.

It is important to us as a company to connect with our seafarer’s, face-to-face, as much as we can, and this usually happens through our annual Crew Conference. Unfortunately, that was not possible this year, but we felt that we still had to connect with our seafarers and continue our “one team” approach. Even though a lot of our shore-based team members are in contact with our sea staff on a daily basis, it is important to get everyone in the same “room” to ensure everyone has the opportunity to build on important company relationships, so we decided to go virtual.

Hosting the event virtually enabled junior officers to join in and gain some great insight from our team, and some of our ships were also able to attend while at sea. A number of our office staff had the opportunity to listen in on the discussions taking place, which is not possible under normal circumstances. This united approach gave people the opportunity to listen, learn, take part and add value across the entire global organisation.

Since this was a virtual conference, we were also able to have a diverse panel, tackling a wider range of topics. For example, Anthony Gurnee our CEO, and Bjorn Hojgaard, CEO of Anglo-Eastern Univan Group, spoke about the market and strategies implemented throughout the pandemic. Additionally, there was a session on Environmental Social Progress (ESP) and why it is so important. There was even time set aside to explore how we, as a company, utilise social media. Furthermore, junior officers received advice on how to nurture their career development and reach their professional goals. It was also a great to have guest speakers from the West of England P&I Club, a leading insurance provider, which generated a lot of discussion around topics currently affecting the industry and our team members.

With an impressive 108 attendees in total, we hope that participants gained useful information from our panelists and enjoyed being able to interact with the global team both at sea and on shore. Special thanks to all who were involved in making the conference the success it was.