Mercantile Marine Management and Reederei NSB form joint venture

Monday, 20 August 2012 00:01 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

By Rashika Fazali

Mercantile Marine Management (MMM) of Sri Lanka and Reederei NSB of Germany formed a joint venture at Hilton Residencies Colombo late Thursday evening.

Addressing the media, MMM Director and General Manager Captain Rohan Kodipilly stated the reason behind this joint venture was to expand their crew management services and provide their well-trained and experienced Sri Lankan seafarers to manage ships owed by NSB.

He further mentioned that this would give unemployed Sri Lankan seafarers more job opportunities in addition to working with a global company.

Since Sri Lankan seafarers are competent and ambitious, and the demand for seafarers globally is high, Captain Kodipilly strongly believes this joint venture would do the shipping industry in Sri Lanka a lot good.

Reederei NSB, with experience of 30 years in the shipping industry, is one of the leading shipping companies worldwide. NSB Chief Financial Officer Lutz Weber mentioned that they have offices around the world including Korea, Singapore and USA, with investments of US$ 6 billion. Their services range from ship management of container ships and tanks to supervision of ship new buildings throughout the world. At the moment, they have over 100 ships under their management. Meanwhile, MMM aims to provide well-trained seafarers to the international shipping industry, while dealing in crew management, ship management and training amateurs for the future.

Known as Sri Lanka’s largest crew manager, MMM now owns over 80 ships with a turnover of Rs. 1.2 billion in Sri Lanka as stated by Mercantile Shipping Group Managing Dire-ctor Thomas Kriwat.

Having being in the industry since 1996, MMM now has its own marine academy in Galle, Mercantile Seaman Training Institute.

By 2016, their aspiration is to have contributed to the industry by supplying as much knowledge as they can.

With this new joint venture, the first container ship Buxhanda to be managed by Sri Lankan seafarers will embark on a journey from Europe to West Africa on 4 September 2012, carrying 2,500 TEUs.