The awards were presented in Athens on 30th May in recognition of their contributions not only to Liberia but also to shipping and the community at large.
All the recipients have diversified activities in other sectors as well as shipping and are recognised for their contributions to culture and public interests. Moreover, most have been identified on the so-called Top 100 lists of most influential shipping personalities.
The recipients were -
George Procopiou, founder of Dynacom Tankers Management, started his active co-operation with the Liberian Registry in 2001 shortly after LISCR took over as the administrator of the Liberian flag. Since then, Dynacom has become Liberia’s largest client in Greece in terms of numbers of ships and deadweight tonnes.
Vangelis Marinakis has developed Capital Ship Management into a diversified shipping enterprise. Most notably, Capital Shipmanagement, with a very large fleet of Liberian-flagged ships, has one of the best safety records in the Greek-owned fleet as determined by both flag state and port state inspections.
Capt Panagiotis Tsakos, founder of Tsakos Shipping & Trading, has built one of the largest shipping companies in Greece. The Tsakos Group is also one of Liberia’s largest clients. The Tsakos-owned Aframax ‘Ise Princess’ became Liberia’s 3,000th active vessel in 2009, exactly 60 years after the registration of Liberia’s very first vessel in 1949.
Panos Laskaridis, current President of the European Community Shipowners Association (ECSA), is the driving force that led Liberia to become involved in regulating the fisheries transhipment business.
Dimitris Lemonidis established Element Shipmanagement, his second start-up after co-founding Ciel Shipmanagement together with Kostis Konstantakopoulos. He has been one of the strongest and most vocal independent advocates of the Liberian flag both in Greece and globally.
Michalis Pantazopoulos, Senior Vice-President and Managing Director of LISCR Hellas, said, “Liberia is proud to honour these trusted Greek shipping partners with this award as a mark of gratitude for their continued support.”
At the same time, the Liberian Registry has claimed a 62% reduction in vessel detentions in the US over the past three years and, for the 15th year in a row, is not among those flags targeted by the US Coast Guard (USCG).
Alfonso Castillero, CCO of the Liberian Registry, said, “Despite efforts made by other flags to confuse the industry, the USCG 2017 Annual Performance Report for Port State Control (PSC) makes it clear that, far from being targeted by the US Coast Guard, Liberia continues to provide effective, quality compliance solutions for its fleet. Liberia is not on the list of USCG-targeted vessels.”
The Liberian Registry currently has the fourth most vessels of any flag state enrolled in the USCG’s Qualship 21 programme. In addition, it is White-Listed by the Paris MoU and the Tokyo MoU. It had the lowest detention rate of all major flags (1.67%) in the 2017 Paris MoU. It has also recorded a 20% reduction in detentions over the last three years under the Tokyo MoU, thanks to a 2% detention ratio change during that period, which is the is the biggest positive increase among all major flags in the Tokyo MOU.
Meanwhile in China, Liberia has achieved a 41% reduction in detentions thus far in 2018, compared to last year and is the only major flag able to show a decrease in detentions over the past three years in that country.
Finally, in Australia, there has been a 49% reduction in detentions of Liberian-flag ships over the last three years and a 6.4% detention ratio change over that period which is the biggest positive increase of all major flags in Australia.