Canada Steamship Lines announces consolidation of its ship and shore operations

Nov 10

2014

Canada Steamship Lines (“CSL”), a division of The CSL Group, the world’s largest owner and operator of self-unloading vessels, today announced it is consolidating its ship and shore operations under one umbrella and one CSL brand.

Effective January 1, 2015, ship management activities currently provided by V.Ships Canada will be integrated into CSL’s organisational structure to streamline operations and customer service, and create a more robust alignment of its employees, corporate values and business approach.

Among the V.Ships Canada managerial functions that will be transitioned to CSL are operations and technical, crewing, labour relations, purchasing, accounting and local IT support. Under a new service agreement, the wider V.Group brand will continue to provide management systems to CSL including VMS, ShipSure, Marcas Purchasing, V.Catering, among others. 

This action represents the natural evolution of CSL’s long-standing partnership with V.Ships Canada and builds on the success of the past 15 years that brought world-class management systems and economies of scale to CSL, and gave rise to the SafePartners program.

CSL is grateful to V.Ships for its valuable contribution over the years, and for the many accomplishments achieved together, but now the owner-operator has decided to enter a new phase in its organisational model.

We are confident about our future as an integrated organization that will see the return of ship management to our core internal functions, We made this decision because we firmly believe that our new structure will benefit our employees and crews, foster greater collaboration and communication, drive accountability throughout the business, and give us a stronger foundation for growth. For our customers, our streamlined operations will deliver more consistent, harmonized and efficient service.

Louis Martel, President of Canada Steamship Lines

This decision does not affect the day to day operation of CSL’s vessels. It also does not involve or impact CSL’s relationship with V.Group in other divisions, nor with other ship managers. For CSL’s customers and suppliers in Canada and around the world, it is business as usual. 

Canada Steamship Lines is a division of The CSL Group, the world’s largest owner and operator of self-unloading vessels. Headquartered in Montreal with divisions based in the United States, the United Kingdom, Norway, Singapore and Australia, CSL delivers more than 76 million tonnes of cargo annually for customers in the construction, steel, energy and agri-food sectors. 

V.Ships Canada is a division of V.Group, a leading global maritime service provider specializing in the outsourced technical management of high value maritime assets and the provision of a wide-range of high value supporting technical, workforce and commercial services. V.Group operates in the commercial shipping, cruise, energy and defense sectors.