We are pleased to announce that our long-standing member Costamare Shipping Company S.A. in Greece today signed an MRM licence agreement. In total, 13 members of The Swedish Club now hold an MRM licence agreement.

The Swedish Club and its members share an important objective – namely to ensure that member ships carry their cargo and crew as safely and efficiently as possible. However, sometimes the unwanted and unexpected happens. Many costly accidents and claims are results of unsafe attitudes, lack of teamwork and communication or simple misunderstandings. This may involve the most experienced mariner but if there is no defence to these errors, the consequences may be severe.

The Swedish Club has been involved in Maritime Resource Management (MRM) training since the early 1990s with the purpose of combating accidents caused by such errors. With recent reports indicating that shipping companies that have successfully implemented MRM also have substantially reduced accidents and claims, we have decided to launch a special campaign to gain more Swedish Club members as MRM licensees.

Members may decide to run the full MRM course or use just selected training material at officer conferences and similar. The training material will also provide an excellent tool for understanding accidents, incident reporting and analyses, and much more.

To assist members in getting started, a “train the trainer” event, specially dedicated to Swedish Club members, will be held on 27-28 September 2011 at The Swedish Club’s office in Gothenburg.

Costamare Shipping Company S.A. was founded by Captain Vasileios Konstantakopoulos in 1975 and is one of three separate independent ship management companies established by Costamare Inc. to provide full management to the Costamare Inc. fleet of containerships. Costamare Inc. is a leading international owner of containerships. Through its subsidiaries Costamare Inc. owns a fleet of 58 vessels aggregating approximately 320,000 TEU, including 10 new build containerships on order aggregating approximately 90,000 TEU and ranging from about 1,000 TEUs to about 9,500 TEUs capacity.