Norbulk Black Sea

Norbulk Shipping Company is headquartered in Bermuda. Management offices are located in Glasgow, Riga, Helsingborg, Saint John NB, Genoa and St. Petersburg. The company is privately owned.

Our core business activity is technical ship management. The present managed fleet consists of; LPG carriers, VLCC’s, product and chemical tankers, Ro-Ro’s, refrigerated cargo container vessels and bulk carriers. Norbulk, through its operating subsidiaries, presently undertakes full technical management of over 80 vessels.

All Norbulk offices and managed vessels follow the same operating procedures and adhere to the same operating standards. Norbulk redeploys senior staff between the various operating offices for career development purposes and to ensure a common company culture. Norbulk Shipping UK Ltd is the main operating office employing over 60 staff with a further 40 plus staff employed at our other offices.

Norbulk Hanza Riga are manning agents responsible for the recruitment, appointment, and administration of East European sea staff. The selection of officers lies with the Glasgow, St. John, Helsingborg and Genoa offices. Manning agents in Philippines with close relations provide additional sea staff to the group. Norbulk has full control over most of its manning agents which is essential to ensure crew continuity and competence. The group employs in excess of 3500 seafarers, a database of competent seafarers provides additional labour as required. While most manning agents’ main customers are other Norbulk affiliates they also undertake crew management directly with other ship managers and ship owners.

Over the last 5 years the group has supervised the construction and taken delivery of numerous new buildings in Korea and China. A series of product tankers in Korea, chemical tankers, handy size bulkers and Ro-Ro’s in China.

Human Resources are of vital importance to the successful vessel operation of Norbulk’s managed fleet. It is through recruitment, continual appraisal and training that we develop highly skilled seafarers. Seafarers renumeration and well being are carefully considered to ensure high retention rates of all seafarers and especially key ranks.

To reach this target great emphasis is placed on Crew Performance Reports. This appraisal system provides feedback concerning the ability and conduct of all crew. All involved in crew performance appraisal need to be fully trained in order to produce concise objective reports and identify training requirements. Our in house training centre in Riga has been established for many years to satisfy rigorous training demands. Norbulk training managers ensure appropriate training courses are provided to meet the needs of individual owners and trades.

The Norbulk group recruits officers and crew through offices in Latvia, Russia, Sweden, Canada, Philippines and the United Kingdom. The company is also actively involved in training cadets under the UK tonnage tax system. The majority of the officers serving on managed ships are from European Countries.