Page 12: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (December 2018)

The Weight of

COATINGS

Expectation

About the Author

Andreas Glud is the Group Segment

Manager, Dry Dock for Hempel A/S.

The speed at which we live today has gathered signi? cant pace since the smart- phone has become ubiquitous worldwide as the essential tool for daily living. We have become accustomed to having what we want, when we want it and how we want it. For most of us, our use of digi- tal technologies has in? ltrated into ev- ery sphere of our lives – from how we communicate with each other to how we arrange our travel, pay for our lunch or exercise. We are, perhaps unwittingly, increasingly ‘ef? cient’ social beings. We have streamlined how we live, how we work, how we behave and consequently, our expectations as consumers and ser- vice users has also changed. We demand, perhaps above all else, ef? cient and cost- effective service provision.

Shipping operations, which are vital to the movement of 90 per cent of the world’s goods, are therefore funda- mental to just how ef? ciently and cost- effectively we can live. The pressure to drive down transportation costs, rightly or wrongly, then often falls at the feet of shipowners and operators, their char- terers or ship managers who only have a handful of options for signi? cantly lowering costs by increasing their own operational ef? ciency. In a highly com- petitive operating environment, further constrained by increasingly stringent

Photos: Hempel 12 Maritime Reporter & Engineering News • DECEMBER 2018

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