Tag: WISTA

Gone is the myth that ‘women are bad luck at sea’. Living in the twenty-first century, we clearly understand that it is just a superstition. Several organizations have set the ground in the last decade for creating a greater awareness towards acceptance of women in the industry.

Cargill will cooperate with four NGOs to promote sustainability initiatives and enhance accountability across the ocean shipping industry. Through these collaborations, the company is aiming to spearhead industry-wide progress toward safer and more efficient international shipping.

The India-based Anglo-Eastern Maritime Training Centre, ISWAN, and WISTA have released a new booklet on building and maintaining gender diversity onboard merchant ships, addressing critical social, cultural and interpersonal issues that can affect productivity of seafarers.

The WISTA Hellas 2017 Annual Forum, which took place on 27 November, at Intercontinental Hotel in Athens, included discussions focusing on the current and future challenges that may affect the shipping industry and on how ship owners can cope with these challenges to move forward.

Ms. Katerina Stathopoulou, Member of the WISTA International Executive Committee, advises how to ensure a long term career in shipping and talks about WISTA’s efforts to achieve gender balance in shipping, which by nature is a male –dominated industry. Ms Stathopoulou refers to WISTA’s powerful collaborations with big Associations, confirming that the organisation continues action towards women’s empowerment in the maritime community.

In June 7, Women's International Shipping and Trading Association signed a MoU with the Institute of Chartered Shipbrokers, in London. The two organisations will offer five scholarships annually, over the next 10 years, to individuals nominated by WISTA International. The scholarship will cover the Foundation Diploma programme at The Institute.

The WISTA Hellas 2016 Annual Forum brought key players from the Greek and international shipping community together for an animated panel discussion on the uncertainty dominating the global market at Intercontinental Hotel in Athens on Thursday 8 December.

WISTA has said that although smart ships are likely to be carrying cargoes within 10 years, all in the logistics chain need to adapt in order to make good use of the new technology and the huge amount of data that will be available as a result. Shipping will go from a “poor beginning” in terms of generating and using data to be at the forefront of new technology.

Female leaders of the island’s shipping industry have launched a Bermuda chapter of the WISTA. Bermuda is the 40th country to join the global organisation, whose members are women in management positions in the maritime transportation business and related trades worldwide.

WISTA UK has recently hosted an event to challenge its members to address the major issues affecting the shipping industry which focused on the part the maritime sector plays in the climate change agenda. The subject of the debate was the divisive emissions problem, with the panel exploring potential solutions to curtail shipping’s emissions.First to stimulate thoughts was David Donnelly, Partner at Mazars, who looked at his experience as an expert in energy efficiency in buildings and how techniques could be transferred across into the maritime sector. Members learned that there has to be a financial justification in undertaking any investment in retrofitting environmental-efficiency technologies to vessels.Where financial gains could be realised fairly quickly after initial CAPEX, it was explained, as in insulation and lighting systems, then retrofitting could be undertaken with relative ease. Other technologies, however, may not be retrofitted so easily because of the longer return on investment or simply because their commercial benefits cannot be monitored – in the maritime sector this is illustrated by ballast water treatment systems.  In such cases in other sectors, said Donnelly, the energy efficient investment is deferred until the normal lifecycle replacement of the particular equipment.There is an element of corporate social responsibility ...