Back>
 

Life on the Edge

Text of Lloyds List article dated 6th January 2005:

TROUBLESHOOTING at a hard-to-access seaport in Africa, or in the hotspots of the Middle East and Asia — such can be the hard reality behind success in the protection and indemnity services that are so essential to ship owners.

Peter Astbury, who gave up a relatively smooth job at a leading P&I manager to set up his own crisis-fixing company, has dramatic tales to relate.

He is sure that his organisation, Astbury Marine Services, is going to be in increasing demand.

Astbury Marine provides P&I clubs, ship and logistics operators, market insurers and traders with flexible investigation, mediation and negotiation services on the ground in places where either war or civil unrest is endemic or the infrastructure and the formal exercise of law is uncertain or non-existent. 

Incidents where ships, crews and cargoes are detained for apparently irregular and arbitrary reasons are on the increase again, says Mr Astbury. Usually these incidents are compounded by lack of hard information, and in particular by the fact the parties involved usually have little or no knowledge of each other. Confidence and trust is invariably in short supply.

Take one of his recent, highly complex, assignments.

This involved a mission to Berbera in Somaliland, a land which has suffered terribly from civil war and which is now working hard to obtain recognition as an independent sovereign nation apart from the rest of Somalia.

A ship was forcibly detained by a local cargo receiver in relation to a claim for water damage to cargo of sugar caused by inadvertent hold flooding during the voyage. The claim was for almost US$1 million but there was a scarcity of formal documentation to support this figure. The receivers wanted the claim to be paid in cash before they would allow the ship to sail. The ship was under considerable structural stress because of the presence of 2,500 tons of damaged cargo left on board in the aft cargo hold; the owners were concerned about the safety of their crew and last but not least, they urgently needed the ship to sail to meet a very tight delivery date for a new and highly profitable long term charter.

At very short notice, Mr Astbury arrived at the capital, Hargeisa, on an old Russian Ilushin turbo prop plane, where he was met by a representative of P&I  Club correspondent Omer Ali Dualeh & Co who traveled with him by car the 170 km to Berbera and provided invaluable back up during his stay there.

Having checked in with the ship and master, he entered into negotiations with receivers which ran late into the night and continued on and off through the following night and much of the day afterwards.

During the course of these negotiations and parallel investigations in the port it became apparent that the receivers' concerns were limited to securing compensation for real losses and that the ship would be released immediately if this compensation was forthcoming.

Talk of bank guarantees and escrow agreements whereby funds would only be paid after the release of the ship had no practical resonance, in a country that for the time being lacks an effective bank or legal system and has only limited communications to the outside world

It became apparent too that although not directly involved, the Berbera port management - which is keen to see Berbera recover its pre-war position as one of the leading ports on the East African seaboard - wanted a quick and proper resolution of the matter.

Mr Astbury was able to take a positive view about the receiver’s integrity and to obtain the necessary assurances that if the funds were advanced, the ship would be released. He was able to persuade the receivers to accept a discount on their claim and to commence the discharge of damaged cargo immediately, and to exert their best efforts to discharge it as quickly as possible.

This last point was critical because, under the prevailing conditions of Ramadan, the local stevedores were in no condition to do anything quickly. However, the receivers, with strong encouragement from Mr Astbury, were anxious to demonstrate that they could keep their side of the bargain and were eventually able to persuade the port stevedores to allow them to bring in their own contract labour — no small feat on the part of the receivers, Mr Astbury recalls.

"Nothing, however, is ever simple," he adds. "Against all the odds, the ship was discharged in time to sail to meet its next contract deadline. But due to a hitch in the receiver’s agent’s bank in Djibouti, there was no record that the owners’ payment for port disbursements had been received, and the agents were understandably reluctant to let the ship sail”.

Mr Astbury was able to persuade the agents to release the ship on the undertaking that he would remain on site until funds were confirmed as received. The ship did sail and fortunately the Djibouti bank confirmed receipt of funds the following day.

 Astbury Marine has been active in many of the world’s less accessible places and hotspots in recent months, including post-Saddam Iraq.

 What made Mr Astbury give up the relative security of his position as Thomas Miller P&I’s Area Director for Japan (and his opportunities to enjoy sushi, sake and other such refined pleasures) for the rigours of  life in the front line? " It’s the adrenalin buzz one gets from operating on the edge, from making things happen and from savouring the sense of job-done on the plane home," he says.

 According to Mr Astbury, "there are, underlying most apparently arbitrary or uncertain situations, often real and genuine concerns. Uncovering and working with these concerns through to face to face engagement with local parties on the ground is at the core of the Astbury Marine service. Greater knowledge and trust invariably create opportunities to break deadlocks, make things happen and achieve win-win solutions for everybody”.

Astbury Marine maintains detailed country files and a wide network of country contacts. No country or location is necessarily off limits.

[Top]