# Let's create the best crewing

that has ever existed

Representative Office Manila

Supplementing

Ship Managers

with crewing background from Manila

We synergized Owners Rep office and Manning Agency into a single high-performance ecosystem, focused on delivering the best crewing.
At no extra cost.

Good Crewing goes beyond seafarers. It extends to relationships and strategic alignment with the office in Manila.

Good crewing is about building structured, long-term systems that support vessel performance, cost control, and compliance.
A resume tells a seafarer's past record, our local expertise tells a seafarer's future.

For us, there's no "one-size-fits-all".
Our Manila-based operation understands each client and seafarer as a unique asset.

▪ True Owner's representation:
We act as your eyes and ears on the ground, ensuring your specific standards and culture are upheld.

▪ Quality over Quantity:
We filter for excellence, focusing on technical proficiency and loyaly that make Filipino seafarers the most sustainable choice for your vessels.

▪ Direct Accountability:
From rigorous vetting to documentation and welfare, our local team ensures a seamless pipeline of compliance and talent.

We foster

▪ Initiative

▪ Proactivity

▪ Assertiveness

Crewing & Training

While Filipino seafarers are the single largest and most sustainable crewing source in the world ...
... it matters how their office in Manila functions.

Our Manila-based operation treats every seafarer and client as a unique asset.
Through individual performance assessment, we identify specific strengths and growth areas for every crew member. This approach allows us to curate continuous learning paths that transform good seafarers into industry leaders.
Our focus on continuous improvement reduces human error, minimizes downtime, and ensures your fleet operates at peak efficiency.

To train good crew to be better, we source from the best specialized insitutions available in Manila. Our self-driven approach includes:
▪ 2E License program
▪ Cook to OS-Cook program
▪ AB to AB-Cook training program
▪ see Galley Training

When seafarers feel seen, challenged, and supported, they stay.
Step ahead with us to a stable, well-managed team and structured processes.

Recruitment & Compliance

Manila is the "Manning Capital of the World".

Under MLC2006 and Magna Carta for Filipino Seafarers, collecting placement fees from seafarers is strictly prohibited.
Compliance in crewing does not only refer to STCW. In Manila it refers also to Philippine government regulations and interpretations, to which shipowners and managers are bound through their Licensend Manning Agencies.

We protect seafarer's livelihood and shipowner's reputation by ensuring every hire is based purely on merit.
Our unwavering principles: zero tolerance, no unethical practices.

360-degree vetting: We dig deeper than the paperwork.
Skill can be taught, but character and attitude are inherent. We conduct rigorous behavioral assessments to ensure our seafarers possess the resilience, teamwork, and proactive mindset required to maintain a safe and efficient vessel.
Beyond the minimum checklist, our compliance driven approach ensures your vessels are always audit-ready and risk-free.

By partnering with Philippines oldest online recruitment platform, we have access to 130,000 applicants on file.

Integrity in every placement. Compliance in every contract.

Crew Retention

Our Filipino crew retention rate KPI remains consistently around 90%. One of the highest in the industry (which currently hovers around 75%).

Our strategies to fill a vacant position:

▪ Internal Sourcing
Reviewing current crew first.
Re-engaging qualified former crew.

▪ External Sourcing
Launched simultaneously, to build applicants pipeline.
External hiring is considered only after internal options are exhausted.

▪ Optimizing Talent Management by
partnering with vessel management to ensure
objective and detailed performance reporting.
thereby leveraging the right talent insight
for rotation and careers.

▪ Seamless crew rotation
▪ Career progression
▪ Sustainable retention

Crew Pooling

For the purpose of providing an emergency standby pool for our clients,
qualified applicants are invited to join our Standby Pool while on vacation.

▪ Simple and uncomplicated entrance tests
▪ National license and flag endorsements verification
▪ No reference check at previous Manning Agency (yet)
▪ Documents complete and in office
▪ For senior officers, we pay sign-up acceptance bonus
▪ Overnight-boarding rooms at office building, free gym use

Applicants can stay in the pool as long as they want,
until they are joining their previous or another Manning Agency.

We guarantee document release right away.
Applicants can to the standby pool as often as they want.

Galley Training

We always wanted to have a galley ship kitchen in the office.
For practice and training of young talents.
To honor the onboard catering profession, and train respect for food.

Trade Test for new-hire cooks.
Culinary upcycling, save costs.
Practice for Messmen with promotion.
AB to AB-Cook project for coaster ships.

National Traditional Dishes for each group of nationals onboard.
Client specific standard fleet dishes that each cook should be able to cook.

Cooks are invited to use our galley to test new recipes that they want to try out onboard.
Practice cooking according to recipe.

Outsourcing

For European companies, our location Philippines is advantageous to shortened processing cycles, due to advance world time zone.

In the Philippines, high proficiency in English language, young, skilled and motivated workforce are the core of a successful outsourcing.
All resulting in high-end work and attention to detail.

We are providers of corporate backroom operations, processes and logistics. Specialization in Crewing.

For German Ship Owners who are required by German tax law to keep management functions in Germany, we provide all other support services.

Our functions include processing of Seafarer documents, business email correspondences, secretarial and documentary functions, customer data and database maintenance, crew evaluations, briefing and de-briefing of Seafarers on customer's behalf.

We guarantee confidentiality of proprietory information and data privacy.

People Development

We found our strength in people skills- and talent recognition. Staff attitude, taking responsibility and ownership are the pilars of a solid enterprise. So we develop it.

Management and Executive Training

The program offers a comprehensive and well-rounded view of the different processes and functions in a company and the industry. Participants have the chance to practice leadership and be exposed to staff critisism. The experience not only provides participants with the know-how but also with a perspective of what they really want to pursue as a long term career. Participants learn first-hand skills to help shape their character and attitude, and to benefit from personal recognition.
- Be inspired - be admired -

Paid Internship / On-the-Job-Training

A 8 to 12-week development program designed for qualified students who require practical professional experience as part of their university or college course requirements. Since shipping office and crewing in particular does not have any specific course, participants from any course are welcome.
Despite being a student of an industry unrelated course, a participants might find the shipping and crewing business as field of interest.

Web Development

We develop browser based database applications, specific for crewing needs.

Innovative concept for Crewing Budget, that sources from actual crew rotation planning for the forthcoming year, taking analysis of previous year's actual figures and forecasted changes, delivering detailed budgets.

An efficient and effective processing flow works through automation and database support.
Automation reduces error of manual data handling.
Automation reduces labor, thus it is cost effective.

Modules include Crewing, Travel, Finances, Quality Management Library, Forms and Reports. Simple functions include APIS code for flight bookings, Seafarer details composition for crew changes, pre-filled forms and employment contracts.
Customized reports deliver crewing statistics and KPI monitoring.

Scope includes client specific crew test and training materials, Continuous Professional Development.

Go Green

Save Paper

No printing of Emails. No Photocopier. No unnecessary printing - use of scratch paper for draft printing.
For half a decade we confidentally abolished 'Crew Personal Files', in the Philippines known as 201-Files. Scanning and electronic filing replaced photocopying. Scans are linked to our database. We have a strict regular and efficient system back-up. Our emergency office evacuation plan is designed to prevent loss of data.

Green Purchasing Policy

Environmentally friendly suppliers and products are preferred at same purchasing costs.

Save Energy

We minimize use of electricity. Outsourced Email- and Webserver, no 24 hours operated computer equipment necessary at our office. No weekend office hours (except emergencies), in order to save electricity. Efficient use of aircondition and electric consumers. All electrical equipment is connected through power strips, that are switched off after office hours. We are able to cut our electricity consumption to half of the office's previous tenant.

Zero Waste Principles

One-way packaging is avoided at the source, e.g. while shopping. For shopping and purchasing, reusable bags are used. No plastic bags are accepted from the store. Remaining trash is separated and brought to recyle dealers.

The Brief

Phil. employment contract update

2 min read

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Phil. employment contract update

The Philippine government Department of Migrant Worker DMW (formerly POEA), who is in charge of ruling over Filipino seafarer employment terms and conditions internationally, announced last 7. July 2026 the signing of newly finalized seabased employment conditions.

The new conditions are the result of Philippine tripartite meetings, comprised of Philippine government departments, labor represented by AMOSUP, and the local maritime agency industry represented by ALMA group.

New conditions have not yet been publicied, but what we know already is that Mental Health is now included under occupational diseases. Therefore, for the first time, a broader look must be given at Pre-Employment Medical Examination PEME, which up to now focused on physical conditions of a seafarer, whereas psycological diagnostics were limited on 16PF.
The Philippine government Department of Health, being in charge of PEME, is expected to roll out a wider, though compputer based diagnostic tool for diagnosing mental illnesses.

Shall we see how much a revised PEME will disrupt our industry, failing many otherwise fit ex-crew's medical fitness....

Written by Stefan Schmitt

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AI powering up our crewing database

1 min read

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AI powering up our crewing database

AI has now reached our local self-developped crewing database «manila_base».
Initially using Llama artificial intelligence text processing, it generates prompts using database stored texts, then analyses sentiments, such as
- performance report commenting
- encoded crew operator feedbacks
- medical findings
or a more detailed example, it interprets risks associated with BMI from height and weight in relation to age and onboard duties.

The idea is to give support to crewing decision makers, for our Pre-Employment Vetting, to better understand which is the best seafarer to suggest for a vacant position.

Written by Stefan Schmitt

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Ship Owners above standard

4 min read

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Ship Owners above standard

It is expected that some owners may resort to flagging out their vessels to non-EU flag further reducing the total number of officers to be replaced and we may actually come into a range that is manageable with the slack being picked up by mainly East-European, Ukraine and Russian Officers. An EU ban on marine safety is more likely to be negative than positive. From the perspective of EMSA/EU the system is as strong as its weakest link. From the Industry perspective it seems for the EMSA 99% Philippine MARINA compliance is not fully compliant. Knowing the weaknesses in the education system owners already only deal with graduates of the Top-10 schools and/or subject cadets to additional training before going on board their vessels. Owners do not take Certificate of Competence (COC) of new recruits at face value. The Industry will look at track record, check references and possibly subject newly recruited officers to further testing. Interesting here - for many European owners the minimum standards as defined in the STCW convention are not even high enough as they require a higher standard. So they invest and invested in additional training and enhancement programs here in the Philippines. The Norwegian Ship-owners run a very successful cadet training scheme and a training center and the major Japanese owners operate their own schools and training centers. The Dutch administer Dutch maritime vocational level exams to a maritime college they support before students can qualify for cadet position on board ships of Dutch owners. So over the years the Industry has been training Filipino Officers on board and ashore to the required level. They have evaluations systems in place to monitor progress and now sail with a pool of reliable and competent Filipino officers. Under a ban scenario the EU owners will have to be replaced by officers unfamiliar with the operations and ships. There is a trisect relation between familiarity/experience and safety.
In the short/medium term marine safety is most likely to suffer.
At a meeting in Europe a Nordic country challenged EMSA to come up with safety data that shows Filipino Officers are over represented in marine accident statistics. Despite the load of safety data kept by EMSA no such data is available. In fairness to EMSA it will also be hard to gather such data and marine safety experts will be quick to point out that most accidents are caused by a sequence of events and can seldom be attributed to one single person let alone a nationality. Faced with an EU ban owners have basically two options, change officers or change flag.
As owners might not like the uncertainty of the 'officers they know' being replaced by the 'officer they do not know' they may resort to flagging out their ships to non-EU flag.
Furthermore from a commercial aspect - well by European owners/companies trained Filipino officers will be gladly hired by non-European Ship Managers, e.g. from China and/or Japan Following scenario can happen in future - an EU Flag ship calling e.g. Hamburg, but deemed unsafe and non-compliant with Filipino officers, while another ship of the same owner but with Non-EU Flag calling the same port is deemed safe and compliant ! Will the Port State Control (PSC) inspectors be send in to level the playing field at the risk of escalation, increased uncertainty and many ships ending up detained? Escalation is the least the industry needs right now.
In this sense the EMSA could do the Industry a great service with a scenario that continues to recognize the certificates of those officer who have already proven their competence on the EU flag. Then apply a ban only to new entrants and those without experience on EU Flag ships. The EU will be damaging itself by putting EU ship owners at a competitive disadvantage all under the banner of Maritime Safety that is more likely to go down than go up.

Written by Stefan Schmitt

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Customer is King

3 min read

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Customer is King

Pure personal opinion

Let me start with an analogy:
Germans love bread. Bakery is a necesity. In former times with local traditional bakeries, bread was sold out arund noon.
Nowadays, supermarkets have bread on the shelves until evening. Customer want that.
Unsold bread goes to food trash. Customers want that, too? I guess Customer doesn't really know and isn't really told. Lacking communication and transparency. So what's with the half-baked story that Customer is King ?

Is it Customer is King ? - Hashtags

- Customer is King, ever heard that ?
- Customer Wants It That Way - All Hail The King
- A Stupid Customer - All Hail The King
- We are forced to do what Customer wants, because we are so dependent on their business
- We are forced to do what Customer wants, even though they hired us because of our specific expertise

It is of course every subordinates duty to follow the instruction of the boss. Management makes the decisions. Good management listens to opinions of its subordinates and then makes decisions. That's within a company. When it comes to intercation between companies, the interaction is between two managements. One company contracts another company to buy outsourced experience. Of course the experience is only then its worth if fully utilized. Consensus building between managements is the key.

Our opinion

You don't trust the process?
Because you don't know the process?
Example young Jeff Bezos' amazon.com obsession to customer is king, but intransparently in hidden agenda collecting all customer personal data and making money on it. secretly and eating up, like Jeff Bezos chita and gazelle's tactic, hurting the indutry secretive explotation or leading to explotation as result of enforced "customer is king"-attitude
hypocritical tropes
corrosive behavior
deserve proper advise
break through the opaque world of Crew Management.
Crewing typically accounts for 60% of a vessels OPEX
least understood area, financially challenged only by reducing head count onbard to minimum safe manning
The balance between crew performance, minimum manning, crew motivation
cost savings and operational efficiency
Lack of subject matter experts within organisations
Issues of entirely outsourced crew management, instead of outsourced processes
We use our years of expertise to expose marginal gains in the Crew Budget.
We work with your existing Crew Manager to realise cost efficiencies and work, in many instances, with the existing crew to optimise your crewing spend on the vessel whilst also improving reporting and service levels.
Its not 'customer-is-king'. Its about good results that count.
Its not about approve or reject, its about consensus.
Its about the right to get proper and honest consulting.

The balance of being able to take time to reflect, and to prioritize your future while spending the majority of your day in the present, is beyond valuable, it's life changing.
Do what you love, love what you do.
Success is a series of moments (and choices) leading up to bigger moments.

Wikipedia 3Cs model

Written by Stefan Schmitt

Back to Headlines✕

Stefan Schmitt
Crewing Enthusiast, Founder,
Ship Owner's Representative in Manila

Testimonials

Our principal has a plan for the career of every of us

2/E Jandayan

Medical in Cebu is easy and fast for us Visayan crew, and we save our money not to come to Manila

3/O Bulawan

Good and simple processing, I never wait long if I want something from office. No need to follow-up allotments, since all payments are on time

Cargo Technician Sevilla

We can trust that our principal always find a line-up for us

BSN Gundran

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