VIKINGs Shipowner Agreements are Favored by Shipowners Looking for a Global Safety Partner

Shipowners are queuing up to enter into VIKING Life-Saving Equipment’s new global Shipowner Agreements, which offer tailored, fixed price service agreements for a wide range of marine safety equipment.

In the 12 months since the introduction of its new VIKING Shipowner Agreement offering, leading marine safety equipment manufacturer VIKING Life-Saving Equipment A/S has entered into agreements to service equipment aboard over 3,000 vessels.

Designed to be the industry’s broadest yet most customizable servicing agreements, the new business concept has become an almost overnight hit with shipowners around the world. In contrast to market alternatives, the VIKING agreements were launched to offer flexible conditions covering liferafts and immersion suits, and have now been expanded to handle lifeboats and even marine fire safety equipment. At the same time, the agreements offer a variety of fixed-price options aimed at ensuring that shipowners know exactly what they can expect and how much it will cost.

“Its success shouldn’t be that surprising, really,” says VIKING CEO Henrik Uhd Christensen. “Shipowners are looking for better predictability of costs, and a single point-of-contact for all their safety equipment. They also don’t want to hear about hidden costs after the agreement has been put into operation. And quite frankly, there’s nowhere else you can get that.”

“When we put these agreements together, we’re really sensitive to shipowner business issues. That approach, combined with coverage of the entire safety equipment portfolio, enables us to tailor each agreement more closely than has previously been possible in the industry. It’s not the one-size-fits-all, product-specific solution typically offered by other service providers.”

According to Henrik Uhd Christensen, another aspect of the company’s success with the Shipowner Agreement offering is that the average size of the agreements being signed is steadily increasing. Results just in from the first quarter of 2010 point to a continuation of this trend, adding further fuel to the company’s growth following an impressive annual financial report for 2009.