Which shipowners might invest in ATOMOS-type technologies? We believe
that the analysis reported here sheds some light on this issue. On the one hand, it is
perhaps obvious to expect that the greatest economic benefits from an ATOMOS-type ship
should be realized on a "high-salary" ship (in terms or higher lifetime crew
cost savings). This means that shipowners in expensive EU flags such as Denmark and
Germany would have the greatest (among other Community shipowners) economic incentive to
invest in such technologies. The NPV of the savings they would realize over the lifetime
of the ship would be the highest, among other EU shipowners. The same is true for other
expensive flags, including other Scandinavian countries, Japan, and the United States. On
the other hand, our analysis has strongly indicated that it is mainly in lower-salary EU
flags that ATOMOS-type ships have the greatest chance of beating the competition, that
being conventional low-salary non-EU ships. Since the lower-salary EU flags are the ones
that are :he closest to the foreign competition (in terms of cost), this brings them in a
better position to close the "competitiveness gap" by crew reduction, given the
gap is smaller for them than it is for higher- salary EU flags.
A question then is what might be an appropriate incentive structure in
order for ATOMOS technologies to be adopted by EU shipowners who operate lower-salary
ships (such as Greeks, for instance). As much as this would have the greatest chance of
beating conventional cheap-crew non-EU ships, this would also be the least likely scenario
to occur if a "laissez faire" policy is followed, since such EU shipowners would
have the least incentive in making this happen.
An important caveat: An assumption in all of our analyses has been that
ATOMOS-type crews have received appropriate training and certification. This means that it
might be impossible to implement such ships in countries that cannot supply crews
adequately trained for this purpose. Another important ramification of this assumption is
that a highly skilled crew will generally be more expensive in terms of salary than a
conventional crew, implying that an ATOMOS-type ship that is also a low-salary ship may be
unlikely to occur.
We finally believe that countries suffering from flagging out should
look into the possibility of adopting more flexible manning regulations. These would allow
ATOMOS-type ships to be manned by a mixture of flag and non-flag nationals, so as to
achieve a lower manning cost structure. The declining supply of seafarers worldwide would
provide an additional reason for looking seriously into such an alternative.
