On 12 April, SEA Europe – the Ships and Maritime Equipment Association – organised its workshop with the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA) in Lisbon for the 6th time. The workshop was attended by officials from the European Commission and EMSA as well as industry representatives from European shipyards and maritime equipment manufacturers.
The workshop offered the right platform to discuss a wide range of technical and regulatory issues of common interest to the industry, EU policy-makers and EMSA experts, such as:
- Damage stability of cruise ships
- Fire safety of Ro-Ro decks
- EEDI implementation
- European implementation of the Ship Construction File
- Ship recycling
- Availability of anti-fouling paints in the EU
- Long-term Research Projects, such as marine autonomous systems
“We are very pleased to be here”, said Christophe Tytgat, Secretary General of SEA Europe. “The workshop offers us a great opportunity to explain our vision for and challenges of our sector. We are grateful to EMSA to enable us to do so and we look forward to the next workshop next year”.
The workshop was a big success and has paved the way for a number of follow-up actions, in particular the organisation of a dedicated seminar on ensuring a level playing field for European (SMRC) yards with regard to anti-fouling paints. The current rules on anti-fouling paints are likely to hamper the competitiveness of European SMRC yards. “We need to ensure that the Regulation that was made with good intentions for protecting the environment, remains sound in its implementation and application. We need to avoid that ships being painted with non-compliant paints outside the EU, thus taking away business for EU SMRC shipyards because of stringent rules, would nevertheless continue to sail into EU waters” said Sieger Sakko, the Secretary of SEA Europe’s Ship Maintenance, Repair and Conversion (SMRC) Committee.
In the field of ship safety Henning Luhmann, Head of ship design at Meyer Yard, Papenburg, outlined the future research that will be performed within the industry based and self-financed project Cruise Ship Safety Forum (CSSF). The CSSF will explore the consequences of the upcoming new probabilistic damage stability regulation currently under consideration at IMO and perform a scientific review of SOLAS with a view to further improve the reliability of stability simulation and verification. “This research has the potential to further improve the SOLAS and Stockholm Agreement damage stability provisions and make them more compatible with European industry practices” Luhmann concluded.
EMSA, furthermore, welcomed the SEA Europe input on the protection of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) of innovative European shipbuilders.
“IPR protection is a prerequisite for ship safety and environment protection, because modern ships with increasing complexity cannot be operated without advanced technology. The significant investments made by the European industry have to be properly protected against product piracy in order to secure European innovation the competitiveness of the European manufacturers” requested
Dr. Ralf Sören Marquardt, the shipbuilders’ Accredited Representative to IMO.
To that end SEA Europe has – together with ship owners and classification societies – developed a so-called “Ship Construction File Industry Standard” (SCF IS) describing the principles and models for secure storage of highly sensitive design and verification documents in an onshore SCF Archive Center.
The SCF IS will be noted by the IMO Marine Safety Committee in May 2016 and has to be implemented worldwide afterwards.
SEA Europe suggested EMSA to consider establishing a European Archive Center and to utilize the capabilities of e-tagging for the protection and user-friendly access throughout the ship’s life.
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Background Note
SEA Europe is the European Association for Ships and Maritime Equipment and is the voice of the European maritime technology industry in the European Union. The association represents close to 100% of the European shipbuilding industry in 18 nations, an industry which generates more than €91 billion turnover annually and offers employment in high profile jobs for more than 500 000 Europeans.
For further information please visit: www.seaeurope.eu or contact:
Christophe Tytgat, Secretary General – ct@seaeurope.eu Tel: +32 (0)2.230.32.87
Ralf Sören Marquardt, The Shipbuilders’ Accredited Representative to IMO – marquardt@vsm.de
Tel: +49 (0)4.028.0152.34
Sieger Sakko, Secretary to SEA Europe’s SMRC Committee – sakko@maritimetechnology.nl
Tel: +31 (0)8.844.510.00
