The increase means the club will come in a shade lower than any of the clubs who go for 5% but it looks as if this will still be above the average rate rise at the new P&I year.
The club said all members faced a minimum rate rise of 2.5% to reflect a significant increase in the Newcastle based club’s contribution to the collective claims pool of the 13 International Group mutuals.
TradeWinds reported in August that the contribution of the North of England Club had moved up to 12.1% from 8.3% although the higher figure was not out of line with the mutual’s market share.
Club chairman, Pratap Shirke of ASP Ship Management, links the increase in pool contributions to two large claims that were the biggest in the more than 150 year history of the club.
The grounding of the 151,000-dwt bulker Smart (built 1996) at Richards Bay, South Africa, a year ago is estimated to produce a claim of around $110m despite the wreck removal being contracted on fixed cost terms.
The other is Ocean Tanker’s 318,000-dwt Wu Yi San (built 2012) which hit a berth and pipelines at the GS Caltex refinery at Yeosu, South Korea, with the bill for this incident estimated at about $55m.
Shirke says the ‘A’ rated club remains financially secure adding that the last cash call was now 23 years ago.
“Although freight rates are recovering very slowly from historical lows, the overall level of global trading remains high. As a consequence there are still a significant number of larger claims in excess of US$1 million and continuing inflationary pressures on all claims,' he added.
As well as the general increase all crew and cargo deductibles below $25,000 will be increased by $2,000.
Premiums for mutual freight, demurrage and defence (FD&D) cover will increase by 2.5% at the February renewal.
Fixed premium rates for both P&I and FD&D will go up by 5%.
