Viking signs up with E.R. Schiffahrt
MARITIME SERVICE: By custom-tailoring a Shipowner Agreement servicing contract offered by VIKING Life-Saving Equipment, the shipping company has managed to create a global servicing agreement supported at 42 locations with a single point of contact.
“A Shipowner Agreement made a lot of sense to us, particularly in terms of time-savings and the predictability of servicing costs. And VIKING’s insightful analysis helped us to customize the contract for our exact needs”, says Lutz Mentzel, E.R.Schiffahrt’s Procurement Manager.
The deal is covering liferafts, lifeboats, immersion suits, lifejackets and marine fire systems and equipment such as fire extinguishers on more than 30 vessels of the shipowner’s fleet. The plan is for Viking to manage not just service notifications, but also the coordination of all servicing.
While lifeboats and marine fire equipment will be covered under a fixed-price servicing arrangement, E.R. Schiffahrt saw advantages in replacing other brand liferafts with Viking products.
Together with the immersion suits, these new liferafts will be serviced via fixed-price exchange, which sees products simply being swapped out as their certificates expire.
Viking maintains a worldwide exchange pool for liferaft servicing at VIKING-owned stations in 42 strategic ports. A number of new builds are also included in the tailored Shipowner Agreement.
“It’s exciting for us that farsighted shipowners like E.R. Schiffahrt have the business acumen to revisit the way safety equipment servicing is structured and managed”, says Jorgen Holm, Sales Director. VIKING is experiencing heavy demand for its innovative Shipowner Agreements, which offer a large range of options and can include additional flexibility during the life of the agreement to cater for shipowners’ changing requirements.
Source: Viking Group / maritimedanmark.dk
