Thiago Santos, Corporate Strategy Director at Unimar Shipping Agency in Brazil, is the winner of the 2023 Award. Mr. Santos entered a paper entitled: “ESG in the Shipping Industry: Impacts and Opportunities for Ship Agents”. He is the third winner of the award from Brazil, following the inaugural winner, Mr. Renan Queiroz, in 2015 and 2022 winner Nicolas de Souza.

Further details can be found here.

Further to our earlier posting of the letter to UN Secretary General His Excellency António Guterres below, the International Chamber of Shipping has now circulated his reply to ICS President Emanuele Grimaldi on behalf of the other co-signatories to the letter.

The letter can be downloaded here.

FONASBA is pleased to announce the launch of a new, entry-level course for ship brokers, the FONASBA Certificate in the Fundamentals of Shipbroking. Developed for FONASBA by the Institute of Chartered Shipbrokers, the market leader in education for shipbrokers, the online course runs parallel, and is adminstered in a similar way, to the FONASBA Agent Diploma.

The course is available to employees of companies in membership of FONASBA national associations, or Associate member companies.

Full details of the course can be found here.

With the environmental and sustainability profile of shipping under scrutiny as never before, all the component sectors must play their part in achieving real reductions in emissions and enhancements in sustainability – and ship agents and ship brokers are no different.

Compared to the shipping and port sectors, for example, the overall emissions footprint of both professions is relatively small, but the role of the broker and agent in guiding, informing, and supporting shipowners and charterers, from the fixing of the vessel to completion of the port call, means they have a specific and influential role to play in ensuring that the voyage is as clean and green as possible.

With COP26 imminent, and to encourage the ship broking and ship agency sectors to take positive action to support the overall aims of reducing emissions and enhancing sustainability, FONASBA has issued a Sustainable Development Declaration. Equally applicable to those working directly in those professions as to the national associations that support and represent them, and to FONASBA itself, the Declaration provides guidance to enable ship agents and ship brokers in playing an active and effective role alongside other industry partners.

A copy of the Declaration can be found here

Following the success of their previous video, “Ships Make the World Go” (see below) our colleagues at BIMCO have now launched another, this time entitled “Seafarers Deserve Support”. This new video not only reiterates the role of international shipping in mitigating the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and enabling global recovery, and the concern felt by the international maritime community at the ongoing crisis in carrying out crew changes, but also highlights the danger faced by crews from piracy.

As with the previous video, “Seafarers Deserve Support” is an urgent appeal to governments and authorities to recognise the vital importance of seafarers to the global economy and to ensure they can stay safe at sea and be allowed home at the ends of the contracts.

We are pleased to be able to promote this video in raising awareness of these issues and to support the call for action in putting appropriate measures in place to mitigate them without delay.

FONASBA also congratulates BIMCO on another powerful and thought-provoking video.