Sustainable growth report 2022

Anti-corruption strategy

As members of the Maritime Anti- Corruption Network (MACN), we aim to raise integrity standards for the maritime industry. Furthermore, this membership offers us a tool to provide our seafaring colleagues protection when they are facing challenges in the international operation on corruption, bribery and facilitation payments.

The anti-bribery policy is in place and published in BASSnet and our intranet portal, accessible to all colleagues.

ISO 14001 and ISO 45001 certification

In 2022 we obtained the ISO 14001 and ISO 45001 certificates. To demonstrate our compliance with the respective standards the following steps were taken in preparation for the certification:

1. Familiarize with the standards: Review the requirements of ISO 14001 and ISO 45001 to determine the scope of the management systems that need to be established.
2. Adoption of existing Safety Management System (SMS)- Incorporate an Environmental Management System (EMS) and an Occupational Health and Safety Management System (OHSMS) that meet the requirements of the respective standards within the existing Safety management system.
3. Implement the systems: Implement the EMS and OHSMS within our organization and ensure that all relevant staff are trained on the systems.
4. Conduct internal audit and training: Conduct an internal audit of your EMS and OHSMS to identify any gaps or areas for improvement. Additionally, a Sustainability workshop has been conducted on five vessels for awareness and training. Furthermore, sustainability as a topic has been added to the Safety Leadership program and Office Sustainability workshops have been given.
5. Corrective action: Implement corrective actions necessary to address any gaps or areas for improvement identified in the internal audit.
6. Certification audit: We contracted a third-party certification body (DNV) to conduct an audit of our EMS and OHSMS. The certification body will assess our systems against the requirements of the respective standards and issue a certification if our systems meet the requirements. The Occupational Health and Safety Risk inventory and evaluation is available for each vessel via BASSnet.

An environmental report is published by the SHEQ department each quarter which outlines our safety and environmental performance. The report is shared internally with all the ships and colleagues in the office.

Marine assurance

Related to our marine assurance, we made a switch from a reactive way of working where we focused on actions, increasingly proactive. This means we prevent observations as remarks during audits and control the risks by mitigating them by discussion and documentation. This worked out very well as the level of Marine Assurance approvals for voyages is higher than in 2021.

SIRE 2.0

In 2023 SIRE 2.0 will come into force and has more focus on the human factor, which is very much in line with our culture. We already give a lot of focus on the human factor for the last few years. The current SIRE has still a major focus on technical aspects and procedures. We take note that the human factor is becoming more important in the OCIMF program to make the industry safer. Our people on board are doing the assessments, making the decisions and playing a major part in this.

The marine assurance counterparts at our customers are focusing on digitalising their processes which also Anthony Veder cannot stay behind.

Shipyard audits

Our shipyard HSE audit and evaluation program is intended to maintain a safe partnership with the used shipyards. The HSE performance is rated on objective criteria and safety performances are benchmarked and used in the selection of shipyards. It is our target to reach level 4 (on a scale from 1 to 5) for the HSE performance of the yard.

Unfortunately, we see a declining HSE performance over time which requires additional efforts and follow-up actions to improve HSE performance and meet our goals.

Digitalisation

With a growing influence of digital technology towards our primary processes, compliance, operational excellence and cyber security are important topics. We are compliant with all digital- oriented legislation, for instance, the GDPR.

We currently use frameworks such as ISO to organise our processes and governance amongst others cyber security and data governance.

To decrease risk in large digital projects a clear project management manual has been formulated, including a clear focus on governance within these projects. It is currently under review to enforce this project management manual for all projects throughout the organisation.

Next to a lot of attention to the technical aspects of cyber security, a cyber security awareness training is mandatory for office and fleet. On a monthly basis, modules are mandatory to complete. Furthermore, with the participation in several partnerships, the development of our digital governance is a constant topic of attention delivering a safe and secure Information Technology and Operational Technology system for our people to operate in.

In 2022 we completed the IMO2021 regulation, joined the collaboration platform FERM, and created a secure way to log in to our applications through MFA (multi-factor authentication).

A cyber security policy and cyber security user policy are in place and published in BASSnet and the intranet portal, accessible for all colleagues.

Confidentiality Counsellor

In 2022 we reviewed our external counsellor and decided to select a new confidential counsellor. We found a good match in Aster Luijendijk from Arbo Unie. Additionally, we have an internal confidential counsellor whom people can contact. The external counsellor informs HR Office of the number of reports.

For our seafarers, we have a partnership with ISWAN. They promote and support the welfare of seafarers all over the world and have a 24-hour helpline as a direct service for seafarers. Contact details for these counsellors and helpline are published on our intranet portal.