Japanese owners look to simplify fleets

Japanese owners are focusing on a smaller number of vessel types in response to seafarer shortages and management complexities.

"Taking into account ship management efficiency, we do not want to expand ship types so much," one owner told. "But, since specializing in a single ship type will be dangerous from the perspective of risk diversification, the ideal setup is to focus on two to three ship types. If we form a fleet with the same type of ships, the number of ships one superintendent can oversee will increase. Management efficiency will drop sharply if there are other ship types, even just one unit." "If we own many ship types," said another owner, "we must also get hold of many superintendents and seafarers, leading to higher costs. This will also lead to poor efficiency, as we cannot divert the seafarers we employ to other assignments."

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