As a marine transport operator, we fulfill our social obligations by working to ensure:
a. The safety of human life on the sea,
b. Safe shipping services,
c. Conservation of the environment.
While our crew members today are nearly all from overseas countries like the Philippines, we employ marine engineers with shipping experience and technicians who have studied shipbuilding and marine engineering to manage our shipping services from onshore and perform the following types of daily activities.
(1) Ship visits and inspections
When a ship enters harbor for loading or unloading, we visit the ship and inspect each part of it. If any defects are discovered, we properly instruct the crew to take measures to address the situation. We also carry out loading/unloading safety supervision, including coordination with onshore stevedores handling the cargo.
We have a Crew Training Center in Manila, Philippines established by group companies, where we teach trainees about the Group's Safety Management System (SMS) and train them in shipping-related knowledge and engine-related knowledge and maintenance. Our aim is to develop crew who are fully professional and efficient.
We have also begun training Croatian, Romanian, Chinese, Vietnamese, and other crew.
(3) Maintenance management
To monitor the state of our shipping, we carefully analyze a range of data received from each ship and issue necessary instructions.
Every 30 months, we dock our ships at a domestic or overseas dockyard and inspect the entire vessel in detail. At this time we also carry out thorough maintenance work.
For the sake of the future, we must work to address these problems—not just within the usual frameworks but at the national, regional, corporate and individual levels as well. We have therefore adopted the following initiatives.
（１）Preventing marine pollution by oil
To prevent pollution of the sea by bilge oil from the engine or seepage from fuel tanks or cargo oil tanks, we take such measures as installing bilge disposal equipment inside the engine room and double hulling.
（２）Controlling the outflow of waste water from our ships
Any drainage and other wastes from toilet, urinals and WC scuppers within the ship is passed through a pollution treatment system before being discharged.
（３）Controlling the outflow of other waste from our ships
In accordance with the Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution, we refrain from dumping or discharging any kind of plastic or other waste from our ships.
（４）Controlling the outflow of ballast water
When the ships are empty, they must take seawater into their ballast tanks to maintain balance. This ballast is taken in at the unloading port, and discharged again at the loading port. However, this is causing a new problem—the abnormal occurrence of non-native aquatic creatures outside their natural breeding grounds.
To avoid this, vessels completely replace the ballast water they took in at the unloading port while voyaging in mid ocean. And in the future, we intend to install ballast water treatment equipment on our ships.
（５）Preventing air pollution by shipping
We employ measures to keep the nitrogen oxide (NOx) and sulfur oxide (SOx) exhaust gases generated by the main or auxiliary diesel engines within the standard values.
（６）Restrictions on paints for ships
Ships' bottoms, which are constantly immersed in seawater, eventually become encrusted with shellfish and seaweed. This impedes speed and increases fuel consumption. To prevent this we apply antifouling paint to our ships' bottoms, but this continually elutes microscopic amounts of a chemical (antifoulant), which kills or repels organisms that lodge in the paint film, and thus prevents marine organisms from adhering.
While organotin compounds were used for this antifoulant, its concentrations in seawater have been rising, and the accumulation of this chemical in the ecosystem as a result of being passed through the food chain has led to fears for the safety of humans eating fish from the ocean. In response, we now use only antifouling paint that is free of organotin compounds.
