Gathering in Cyprus for the Annual General Meeting, InterManager members agreed that working together is the way to achieve success and improve standards in the shipmanagement sector.

Accepting the role of President for a further term, Mark O’Neil, CEO of Columbia Shipmanagement, summarised this year’s achievements and commented: “There’s a lot to be happy and positive about and 2023 offers us an opportunity to step up even further.”

Mr O’Neil is a firm believer in the ‘One Voice’ approach and he vowed to increase membership further, encouraging in-house shipmanagement teams to join alongside third party ship and crew managers. “The maritime world is evolving quickly in this post-pandemic era and ship managers need to speak out loudly and in unison on international issues to ensure ship management concerns and crew welfare are properly taken into account.”

His comments were echoed by InterManager Secretary General, Captain Kuba Szymanski, who told the meeting: “Working together really does bring a lot of benefits.” Describing the association’s members as “ambassadors”, he said: “While we are competitors, 80% of what we do overlaps and there is much we can achieve by working together.”

Captain Szymanski encouraged ship and crew managers to “be bold” when speaking out to raise awareness of industry concerns, encouraging them to “flag up your pain points – together we can change things.”