Sustainable growth report 2023

Financial Statement
PricewaterhouseCoopers Accountants N.V. (PWC) performs on a yearly basis an audit on Anthony Veder’s Financial Statements.
For the Annual Report of 2023, they concluded that our financial statements provide a true and fair view.

The areas of focus in the audit report were the valuation of the fleet, compliance with the financing agreements, management override of controls, fraud in revenue recognition, and claims.

Management Review
We conduct an internal management review on an annual basis. The primary objective of this review is to provide the Management Committee with updates on the status of our certified management systems.

This review encompasses general recommendations, as well as specific suggestions on the following key areas:

• Quality
• Occupational health & safety
• Environmental protection
• Sustainability

Furthermore, we undertake a thorough review of our quality management system and environmental management system. This is to ensure their ongoing suitability, adequacy, effectiveness, and alignment with the strategic direction of our organisation.

Regarding fraud risks PWC states in her audit report that no indications of fraud came to their attention. PWC identified no uncorrected misstatements or significant matters.

External Benchmark: EcoVadis
We use the EcoVadis platform to benchmark our ESG performance within the shipping industry. EcoVadis monitors our ESG performance in:

• Environment
• Labour & Human Rights
• Ethics
• Sustainable procurement

The platform provides a score and a corrective action plan, to give insight into how to continuously increase our ESG Score. In 2021, our score was 59/100, which we have improved to 62/100 in 2022. This provided a silver label. The EcoVadis form for 2023 was released during 2024 and is still under review with the EcoVadis organisation. Therefore, we are unable to include the score in this Sustainable Growth Report. However, it is our ambition to reach a platinum label by 2025. To be able to reach this, a lot of work is put into this platform and into the improvement of our score.

Confidential Counsellor
The well-being of our people is of enormous importance, as also stated in ‘Care for People’, specifically at the topic ‘Safe Workplace’. The feeling of safety, psychological safety, in other words, is closely related to feeling heard, understood, and respected. To make sure that Anthony Veder is a safe place to work and that our people have someone to talk to when they run into an issue, we have both an internal and external confidential counsellor. In 2023 our internal confidential counsellor followed and completed successfully a certified training for confidential counsellor.

Contact details for these counsellors are published on our intranet portal. We also incorporated an article on this topic and contact details in our internal magazine and discussed this during our online meeting Ship & Shore Connect. The topic was also discussed during the rating conferences in Indonesia and Manila in 2023. Additionally, we work with ISWAN, the International Seafarers’ Welfare and Assistance Network, which is specifically dedicated to handling these situations concerning seafarers. ISWAN provides a 24-hour helpline as a direct service for seafarers. The contact details for this helpline are also published on our intranet portal.

Reporting Procedure
Anthony Veder is committed to conducting business with honesty and integrity, and aims for a culture of transparency and accountability to prevent illegal conduct and address this if necessary. In the previous years, there was already a reporting procedure in place. However, in 2023, the rules for this procedure were changed and became stricter. Therefore, we had to improve our reporting procedure to make sure we still meet the Dutch governmental requirements.

Now, reporting is better protected and it is clearer who to go to when irregularities are being suspected. Within this procedure, confidentiality and the protection of personal information are being ensured. This new reporting procedure is incorporated in our policy booklet which is available via BASSnet and our intranet environment.

Shipyard audits
In order to maintain a safe partnership with the shipyards our vessels are being docked or repaired we have developed a shipyard HSE audit program. The HSE performance is rated on objective criteria. The audit focuses on HSE management system, safety leadership of the shipyard and more importantly the practical implementation. It is our target to reach level 4 (on a scale from 1 to 5) for the HSE performance of the yard.

In 2023 we audited 17 shipyards worldwide. The results of the audits were logged in our shipyard evaluation tool for benchmarking with other available shipyard supporting the technical department in selecting the proper shipyard.