Sustainable growth report 2023

We always start with safety, when visitors come to our office or on board they are informed of our basic safety rules and every meeting starts with a safety moment. Regularly there are safety meetings, drills and trainings on board. This all resulted in remarkable achievements. In 2023, we have been able to maintain a safe working environment for 362 days without a Lost Time Incident (LTI). This follows our record of 475 days without an LTI.

We continuously work on our safety culture because we can never be complacent in this area. As will be further discussed in the Learning and Development chapter, safety training is essential in maintaining this safety culture. For example, all Chief Officers, and most of our Second Engineers have received our five days in-house Safety Leadership training.

Creating and maintaining safety awareness
To comply with our safety measures and to maintain the safety awareness of our people, both visible and felt leadership is important. Through ship visits, trainings and seminars, our commitment to safety is being demonstrated and repeated regularly.

In January 2023, the annual Safety Event for office colleagues took place in Blijdorp Zoo, Rotterdam. This event revolved around learning about safety, increasing awareness and having fun. Besides the focus on safety and health, sustainability was also being highlighted, which is a crucial topic for both Anthony Veder and Blijdorp Zoo.

In July, a team of SHEQ representatives and technical experts visited the renowned ROG shipyard in Rotterdam to witness a live demonstration of safety habitat usage on board ships. They learned about the efficiency of safety habitats in ensuring the safety of crew and vessels while working in a hazardous environment. Safety habitats allow efficient execution of hot work in gas-hazardous zones without the need to gas-free the ship. Besides eliminating the risk of explosion or fire, this also saves valuable operational time.

Normative safety
Normative safety is about creating guidelines that guarantee a certain level of safety. Standards that measure this normative safety are for example the international standards of the IMO, ISM and SOLAS, and industry standards such as ISO45001. Through audits, the implementation of the Safety Management System is confirmed, which means that safety and environmental standards are being followed.

Progress
Our goal for 2023 was to maintain our safety culture score of > 4. We are proud to say that with a score of 3.89 we are nearing this goal, a consider our safety culture as close to proactive.

We want to further improve our safety culture, as there is still room for improvement, such as learning from our near-miss reporting.

Figures
In 2023, we faced 1 lost time incident, 2 restricted work cases and 5 medical treatment cases. Because communication of our safety measures is as important as those measures, feedback on all cases and near-misses are being published in safety reports. A complete accident investigation is done by the ship and the office immediately after the event. From the report a Reflective Learning is made which is shared with all ships. On board, these learnings are discussed with the crew to learn from and to prevent the same, or worse, from happening again.

Near-miss reports are read, and feedback is given every day. We value the lessons that we can take from the near-miss reports very much. Working on this will help us to prevent first aid cases and more serious accidents.

From the incident investigation documents and the near miss reports monthly and quarterly summary reports are made. These are shared with our ships, office colleagues and our manning agents.