Celebrating the success of Ardmore Shipping and Anglo Ardmore Ship Management’s Seafarer Conference!
Back to newsRecently concluded in Hyderabad, our Seafarer Conference brought together Senior Officers and shore staff from Ardmore’s offices in Cork and Singapore, as well as staff from the Anglo Ardmore Joint Venture office in Hong Kong and Anglo Eastern’s offices in Mumbai.
This year’s conference theme was ‘Find the Balance’ and this was clearly present in every session. The first day began with opening addresses by Gerry Docherty, Director, Fleet Management, and Ashish Malik, Managing Director of the Anglo Ardmore Joint Venture. Capt. Yadu Bassi, Ardmore’s Marine Personnel Manager, presented a video showcasing our 2023 Wellness program and ‘Ardmore Crew’s Got Talent’, highlighting the remarkable engagement of our onboard teams.
Ardmore’s Senior Management team were also well represented, and had presentations from Anthony Gurnee, our CEO, and Mark Cameron, our COO, on the first morning.
As we have transitioned eight of our vessels into AASML from previous technical management, our crewing complement within Anglo Ardmore has become more multinational, as many of our European officers have moved over with the eight vessels. As part of this new cultural landscape, we also had an excellent session on ‘Unconscious Bias’ delivered by Nadia Mather, Ardmore’s Director, Legal. This was a fantastic session and it was great to see the level of engagement amongst both seafarers and shore staff.
This was followed by a session on ‘Trust Balance’ presented by Aideen O’Driscoll, Ardmore’s SVP Corporate Services, and Dr Delna Shroff, Senior Psychologist & Manager at Anglo Eastern. This session included various scenarios of incidents which had taken place on our vessels over the years and required attendees to breakout into groups and discuss trust behaviours, as well as counterfeit behaviours that need to be understood and addressed.
The level of engagement in these more behavioural elements was commendable and we were delighted with the enthusiasm and engagement shown by all.
The afternoon sessions saw C-Suite talks by Ardmore’s Senior Management team, followed by panel discussions with both sea and shore staff, a navigation review by Abhijit Ghosh, Ardmore’s Marine Manager, an insightful session by our cultural officer, Anthony Fernandes of Anglo Eastern, who talked us through a review of the ‘Ardmore Culture’ across the fleet that he has been working on with sea-staff since the start of 2023, and a review of Anglo Eastern’s wellness surveys by Priyanka Gupta, Anglo Eastern’s Director – HR.
Day 2 shifted focus to operational performance with presentations from Suraj Batra, Ardmore’s Technical Manager, and Vasanth Subramanien, Anglo Ardmore Fleet Manager, along with safety and environmental performance review by Samrat Biswas, Senior Manager, QHSE Anglo Ardmore, a crewing review by Vineet Gupta, MD of Crewing at Anglo Eastern and a presentation on Ardmore’s Energy Transition Plan by Garry Noonan, Ardmore’s Director, Innovation. The day concluded with panel discussion of our commercial team moderated by our Chief Commercial Officer, Gernot Ruppelt.
To conclude the second day, we moved outside to the gardens of the hotel to take part in three hours of physical teambuilding activities, which really brought out the competitive spirit amongst the team, as well as a few laughs along the way.
The evening continued with a Gala Dinner, creating a splendid setting for networking and further strengthening the bonds forged during the conference.
The third and final day saw our deck officers remain with us for a Chemical Cargo workshop, led by Cris Nutu, Ardmore’s Cargo Manager, together with Christopher Poppen, from Anglo Eastern’s training academy, and representatives of Jotun Paints, who took the group through the various aspects of paints in relation to the coating and cleaning of the vessel’s cargo tanks.
We would like to thank all involved in the planning and execution of the conference and to all our seafarers, who gave up time during their vacation to join us and contribute in such a positive manner. Together we grow in strength whilst always working together, operationally, and commercially to ‘Find the Balance’.