Vero Marine Pipes ZESPRI Aboard
ZESPRI is a vibrant, innovative company working on behalf of more than 2500 owner-producers. It is the world’s largest exporter of kiwifruit and each year ZESPRI exports more than 80 million trays of kiwifruit, which equates to just under a billion dollars and represents over 35% of the total horticultural exports of New Zealand.
Following an exhaustive tender process, ZESPRI chose Vero Marine as their marine insurers, effective 01 April 2006, with the acquisition process a shining example of extremely effective communication among the broker, the client and ourselves.
To handle the huge volume of kiwifruit being shipped overseas, ZESPRI charters several ships during the year. Recently it was discovered that a charter vessel’s age exceeded 20 years. Typically, marine insurers would be very cautious about the seaworthiness of such a vessel and her ability to protect her valuable cargo. Such caution may result in withdrawal of cover or increased premium.
We asked our appointed surveyor to attend on board and his comments following a dash to Tauranga early one Saturday morning were:
“The ‘feel’ of the machinery was good. A sea-going engineer is alert to smell, sound, temperature, vibration, visual appearance and many other tell-tale signs when inspecting marine equipment. From a personal viewpoint, the author would be comfortable taking this vessel and its cargo to sea.”
So, apparently there’s more to surveying than taking photos!
Together with ZESPRI we were able to heave a collective sigh of relief safe in the knowledge that another shipload of Te Puke’s finest was in good hands.
Blair Hamill is the Commercial Manager at ZESPRI and he says, “we were very impressed with Vero Marine’s proactivity in arranging a survey at such short notice. We were delighted that the vessel was “Ship-shape and Bristol fashion”*. We highly regard suppliers that add value to our operation and Vero Marine has certainly done that.”
* http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/38/messages/2059.html
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