The purpose of ship management has not changed. The nature of excellence has. Anglo-Eastern Univan Group CEO Bjorn Hojgaard on why owners are asking different questions, and what they are really buying.
By Bjorn Hojgaard, CEO, Anglo-Eastern Univan Group
There are moments in every industry when the definition of quality changes. The underlying purpose stays recognisable, but the capabilities required to fulfil it evolve. Aviation still moves people safely. Hospitals still treat patients. Banks still safeguard capital.
Yet excellence in each is no longer defined the way it was thirty years ago. Data, systems, regulation, culture, human factors and risk management have changed what “good” means.
Ship management is going through the same evolution.
For decades, quality ship management meant maintaining vessels in sound condition, operating them safely, meeting international regulations and providing competent crews. Those responsibilities remain the foundation of the profession. They are not optional. But increasingly, they are no longer enough.
Over recent years, in conversations with owners, financiers, regulators, class, insurers, technology companies and seafarers, one theme has become clear: the questions are changing. Discussions once centred on cost, off-hire, drydock budgets, procurement and Port State Control performance. Those subjects still matter. But conversations now often begin elsewhere. How resilient is the operating model? How should geopolitical risk be understood? How do you manage sanctions exposure, cyber risk, decarbonisation rules,
crew shortages, new fuels and AI at the same time, while remaining commercially competitive and still doing the job properly?
None of these questions has a single neat answer. They require judgement rather than procedure.
For perhaps forty years, shipping benefited from a world that grew more open, more efficient and more predictable. That world has not disappeared, but it has changed. Geopolitics has returned to the centre of commercial decision-making. Strategic waterways can become contested overnight. Sanctions are now a recurring feature of trade. Cyber risk is operational, not just an IT topic. Environmental regulation has moved from annual reporting into continuous commercial exposure. Digitalisation creates opportunity, but also dependency. AI promises productivity, but demands judgement about where it should and should not be used.
Together, these developments create a new operating reality, and uncertainty. So the role of a modern ship manager is not simply to operate ships efficiently. It is to reduce uncertainty for owners who take their responsibilities seriously.
That distinction matters. Owners are no longer buying only technical management, crewing and compliance. They are buying accumulated judgement, resilience, systems, relationships, intelligence, people development, data discipline and crisis capability. Ultimately, they are buying peace of mind: the confidence that someone is thinking about the vessel with the same long-term perspective they would themselves, that standards will not quietly erode in pursuit of short-term savings, and that investment in capability will be made before it becomes urgently necessary.
Peace of mind cannot be measured on a balance sheet, yet it is often one of the most valuable outcomes a ship manager can provide.
A craft, not a commodity
A ship manager is not a travel agent for vessels, a procurement office or a manpower agency. At its best, ship management is a professional craft built around seamanship, engineering, operational discipline and institutional memory. A modern manager must still understand steel, machinery, navigation, cargo and people. But it must also understand data, regulation, security, cyber risk, carbon exposure, welfare, AI, finance and reputation. None of this replaces the old disciplines. It sits around them, making the profession
broader, not less technical.
This is why I resist the idea that ship management is becoming a commodity. Commodities compete primarily on price. Professions compete primarily on judgement. Ship management belongs in the latter category.
Price matters, of course. But there is an important difference between cost control and cost cutting. The first is professional. The second can be dangerous when it ignores long-term consequences. Ships are long-life assets, and decisions made today can reveal their full consequences years later. Maintenance deferred, training diluted, weak reporting tolerated or crew development neglected may look like short-term savings. The cost often returns later as breakdowns, detentions, off-hire, claims, reputational damage or lost asset value.
That is the distinction between price and value. Price appears immediately. Value reveals itself over time.
The value of a ship manager becomes visible fastest in a crisis. During geopolitical disruption, owners need more than general security updates; they need interpretation, escalation thresholds, crew support and coordination with naval authorities, flag states, insurers and families ashore. During rapid regulatory change, they need commercial interpretation, not just circulars. During a cyber incident, they need prepared systems and people who know what to do.
The absence of drama in shipping is often mistaken for the absence of effort. When ship management is done well, much of the work stays invisible, precisely because problems are prevented before they become visible.
That discipline is not created overnight. Like compound interest, capability rewards patience. Systems can be bought, software licensed and offices opened. But judgement, trust, operational memory, training culture, technical standards and crisis experience accumulate only through years of doing the work properly. This is why scale alone is not enough. Scale without discipline can simply multiply weakness. The real advantage lies in combining scale with standards, institutional knowledge and accountability. The competitive advantage of a ship management company increasingly resides not in any individual service or system, but in the quality of the organisation itself.
Where we are investing, and why
Seen individually, our investments can look unrelated: one concerns people, another technology, another regulation, another security. In reality they answer the same belief: future competitiveness will depend less on individual services than on continually strengthening collective capability.
Our investment in people is strategy, not welfare dressed up as strategy. In a market where competence is scarce, the ability to identify, develop, retain and promote capable seafarers is one of the strongest advantages a manager can hold. Mission 30 is about rebuilding momentum in the talent pipeline and ensuring the next generation of Masters, Chief Engineers and senior officers grows within a system that understands our standards. Career Care brings transparency to progression, and WE Care brings our welfare, wellbeing and family support under a single philosophy. Looking after people is not separate from looking after our clients’ assets. It is one of the ways we do so.
Our investment in digital infrastructure follows the same thinking. We did not invest in technology to become more digital. We invested to become a better ship management company. Rather than one monolithic system, we built a platform of best-of-breed solutionsintegrated through my.angloeastern into what increasingly functions as a single operating environment. Ship management is ultimately an information business, and the better information flows across functions, the better decisions become.
The same philosophy shapes our approach to artificial intelligence. Much of today’s debate assumes a contest between technology and people. I believe the opposite. AI should replace repetition, freeing people to focus on variation, ambiguity and judgement. It should never substitute for professional judgement, and it is only as useful as the quality and consistency of the information it works on.
Our carbon services reflect the same logic. Environmental regulation is now integral to commercial decision-making. EU ETS, FuelEU Maritime, CII and future IMO measures increasingly shape voyage economics, charter-party negotiations, settlement and fuel strategy. Owners need more than reports; they need interpretation, modelling and practical decision support. Our Sustainability and Performance Services (SAPS) turn a fragmented regulatory landscape into something owners can manage commercially.
Our Global Security Desk is another expression of this. Security risk is no longer confined to a few defined areas. It is shaped by geopolitics, sanctions, electronic warfare and cyber exposure, and by the speed at which situations evolve. The challenge is no longer obtaining information; there is an abundance of it. The challenge is interpretation: understanding what matters, for which vessel, on which voyage, carrying which cargo, in which political context, and deciding what should follow.
Evolving alongside higher, healthier expectations
Evolution does not mean abandoning what made the profession valuable. The test should always be practical. Does this make the ship safer? The crew more capable? The owner better informed? Does it reduce risk, protect asset value, improve reliability and help us make better decisions? If not, it is probably not progress.
Premium ship management is not created by claiming to be premium. It is created by making disciplined choices repeatedly, especially when they are inconvenient. That is also why client selection matters. The best outcomes come when owners and managers share a common understanding of value. A serious owner does not expect waste, but understands that competence has a cost, and that the cheapest option is not necessarily the most economical over the life of a ship.
Expectations across the industry are rising. Regulators and Port State Control are stricter, charterers more attentive, insurers more alert to patterns, financiers increasingly aware that operational quality can become financial risk. This is healthy. A serious industry should not fear scrutiny. It should fear complacency.
The future of ship management will be intellectually more demanding than the past. The ship remains the centre of gravity, but the organisation around it must become smarter: stronger data disciplines, deeper regulatory expertise, better security intelligence, more sophisticated cyber resilience and a clear understanding of how technology supports rather than replaces human judgement. The answer is neither nostalgia nor blind enthusiasm for technology. It is disciplined evolution: evolution before revolution, progress without
forgetting the craft.
Because ship management is, ultimately, about stewardship: of people, assets, trust and global trade. The next generation of ship management will not be defined by who is largest, cheapest or loudest, but by the organisations that continually compound knowledge, judgement, capability and trust. For owners, that should provide something both simple and valuable: greater peace of mind in an increasingly uncertain world.
Bjorn Hojgaard is CEO of Anglo-Eastern Univan Group, one of the world’s largest third-party ship management companies. A Master Mariner by training, he has spent more than three decades at sea and ashore, and serves on the Board of BIMCO.
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