Crew management of the Maersk Gateshead has been contracted out, as has the management of several other Maersk ships. Maersk has said it will shift more management functions from Europe to Asia in order to save money.
AP Moller-Maersk is contracting out the full crew management of six Maersk Line containerships to Norwegian shipmanager OSM Ship Management.
It is a significant move by the Danish owner, which traditionally manages most of its owned vessels in-house.
The six ships are between eight and 11 years old and have previously been fully managed by Maersk. It is OSM’s first such contract with Maersk.
Under the standard BIMCO Shipman contract with OSM, the six Maersk ships will be crewed with a total of 180 Ukrainian and Filipino seafarers.
Maersk previously indicated that it wanted to limit the recruitment of western European officers to reduce crewing costs. It has switched some shipmanagement functions from Rotterdam to Singapore .