First the coronavirus epidemic trapped on-duty crews at work without relief. Then it kept off-duty crews cut off from their ships.
Now — with China holding a near monopoly on crew changes at times during the pandemic — it has driven some managers and owners to reconsider the sourcing of their workforce.
Asia's shipmanagers are adjusting their businesses to cope with a shifting set of constraints to keep their vessels running as crews are held back whether by law, by fear of disease, or by the lack of airline services.
For Hong Kong-based Fleet Management, it means a fleet-wide challenge as it takes deliveries of newbuildings and purchased ships, and adjusts to the new realities of crew rotation and newbuilding supervision.
At the start of the epidemic, Fleet Management had only about 60 of its 550 ships crewed by Chinese nationals. Today, Chinese crews are the only option.
Crew lockdown
"[The] Philippines has stopped the travel of its nationals, while India is under lockdown," Fleet Management managing director Kishore Rajvanshy told TradeWinds.
"China has just resumed crew change for Chinese nationals only in its ports. The situation is compounded by the reluctance of on-leave seafarers who wish to avoid international travel."
At Fleet Management, the forced shift in crewing for both newbuilds and secondhand ships has given some technical management clients a first and unexpected exposure to Chinese crews.
In March, Fleet Management crewed one ship at a Nantong yard and, in April, the company was planning to do four more in China, Japan, and South Korea — all with Chinese crews.
"With on-leave Indian and Filipino seafarers cut out from the global crew supply, we see a distinct rush of owners ready to plan takeovers in yards across China, Japan and [South] Korea using Chinese crew," Rajvanshy said. "Some of our owners have never used Chinese crew before."
The company has built up a crew pool of about 2,000 Chinese seafarers who are processed through Fleet Management's office in Dalian, but this number looks likely to grow.
Access all areas
Chinese crews can replace previous Chinese crew in domestic ports with little complication, or Chinese crews can travel to Japanese and South Korean yards and spend two weeks in a hotel near the shipyard under supervised quarantine — and those are just about the only alternatives for the time being, Rajvanshy said.
"In particular, Fleet [Management] has undertaken yard delivery of one ship in China while crew are already on board another three ships that are undergoing sea trials and are slated for delivery in April," Rajvanshy said.
"Chinese crew are also being planned for two takeovers — one in Japan and one in [South] Korea — where crew will be required to undergo a 14-day quarantine before boarding the ships."
