From Warwick's Desk

Earlier this week the industry was informed by Transnet/NPA that the long process of concessioning the major ship repair facilities in our ports has been withdrawn.  A variety of reasons were advanced but from my perspective the critical issue seems to have been that the industry bidders and Transnet could not come to financial terms that worked for both parties. 

Welcome to the first edition of our new format Newsletter - I hope you will enjoy it.  It will come weekly and will include a roundup of the key news and events in the sector and at SAOGA.  We have also designed it to be used as a handy entry to information on our website as we recognise that many of our stakeholders find it easier to work from mail in their inbox than go to our website.

I'd like to devote this letter to sharing the key strategic plans we have for SAOGA going forward.  Over the past few months we have taken a hard look at what we are doing and what we could be doing and have made some significant decisions about where we will spend our energy going forward.  Four principles underpin the choices we are making:

The past month or so has been the most interesting so far of my time at SAOGA. The reason? We’ve begun the company visits that are part of our industry profiling initiative and it has been absolutely fascinating to get out and see what you are all doing – there are some amazing businesses out there and I’ve been overwhelmed by the hospitality of companies and individuals who’ve made significant amounts of time available to give us a real insight into their...

My apologies that this month’s news letter is so late – I spent a good part of May in the US for OTC and a short break immediately afterwards and have been digging through the backlog of work ever since returning!  This month I’d like to touch a few subjects including the OTC conference, our efforts around profiling our companies and our new website.

Much of my past month has been consumed with two strategic questions: What are the big opportunities for growing the upstream supplier base in our region?, and What should SAOGA be doing to make sure they happen?  My thoughts on these questions have been shaped by insights from many of you over the past months, by the recent Marintek work (here’s a link to the Marintek Report) that those at our last breakfast would have heard about and from an internal...

Greetings and best wishes to everyone for the new year that is now well underway for most of us.   I was lucky enough to have a couple of weeks off over the  holidays to again enjoy the delights of our incredible country.

It’s been a busy past month at SAOGA with the AGM on November 18 and the events around the Norwegian Royal visit last week at the centre of our public appearances.  The AGM was an opportunity to share some initial thoughts about the way forward at SAOGA but I remain preoccupied with the question of how this organization can make a significant difference to the industry we serve and unambiguously make membership of SAOGA a valuable proposition to our...