Successfully changing crews during COVID-19 outbreak is crucial for business

As one of the largest seafood companies in the North Atlantic, Royal Greenland operates a state-of-the art fishing fleet of eight seagoing vessels and also manages a number of partner vessels. The fleet fishes in the vast geographical area from the Arctic regions of Western Greenland to the waters north of Norway and the Barents Sea, covering a distance of more than 3,000 km or 1,600 nautical miles.

In recent years, the fleet has landed up to 60,000 tonnes of seafood annually, primarily Greenland halibut, coldwater prawns, snow crab and Atlantic cod, which are species that are much loved worldwide. In 2019, China took the top position as the company's largest market, with an annual turnover of more than 1 billion yuan. With Group turnover totaling 5.4 billion yuan, China plays a key role in the company's market portfolio.

CEO Mikael Thinghuus has headed the seafood company since 2011. The valuable business principle of healthy risk diversification has always been a cornerstone in Thinghuus' business philosophy: "Royal Greenland is a vertically integrated company with activities covering six to eight different key species and a number of fishing zones with corresponding quotas across which we can spread our supply risk. There will always be years when quotas go down or when specific fishing zones do not perform optimally. The same fundamentally applies to markets; we operate a sound business based on three major regions; Asia, Europe and North America. When economic conditions or business trends change, we are privileged to be able to navigate across markets and species – but with the current COVID-19 outbreak all of the basic rules are totally out of play!"

The company is headquartered in Nuuk, Greenland, and has close to 50 production facilities primarily in Greenland, Atlantic Canada and Germany as well as sales offices around the world. More than 2,200 employees are employed at Royal Greenland, of whom approximately 360 crew members in the trawler division who come primarily from Greenland, Denmark, the Faroe Islands and Iceland.

The operation of Royal Greenland's fleet and continuous harvesting of catches are crucial to the business. Normally, the crew changes in both Nuuk and Sisimiut in Greenland, and in Tromsø in Norway, where the many crew members can easily fly to and from landing ports and stay overnight in local hotels according to schedules planned by the travel experts. When COVID-19 suddenly reached the North Atlantic hemisphere in mid-March, a trawler out in the open sea was probably one of the safest places to be. As all international and domestic air travel in the region was shut down, the crisis also meant the cancellation of all crew shifts, and employees had to stay on board for longer than the normal six-week trips.

"We therefore obviously faced some concerns when COVID-19 cases in the region came under control in mid-April and we could start planning crew changes.

The positive development was a great relief and all employees deserved being able to go home to their families.

Yet we were also seriously aware of the risks associated with a crew change," says Thinghuus. "We therefore meticulously started planning a joint crew change on the seven vessels at sea at the time. At the end of April, we managed to change the crews on all seven vessels, in three ports located in both Norway and Greenland, with the assistance of chartered aircraft from two airlines. In total, 200 crew members moved in one day!"

Two weeks' quarantine and coronavirus tests before onboarding are mandatory, but the least of the new procedures. The lack of regular air traffic and different precautions from country to country, and health authorities' different processing of cases, is a very complex set of parameters to handle. The operation was planned by the trawler division with valuable guidance from the Patient Safety Authorities in Greenland, Norway and the Faroe Islands. All seven vessels managed to set off for new fishing with a new, healthy crew.

Catches are also being landed with all necessary precautions, just as the daily routines in the facilities on land that process catches. The safety of employees and maintaining the highest food safety levels are key priorities for Royal Greenland. Various new routines have been created for hand hygiene, careful cleaning, keeping distance, avoiding all physical contact and training of all employees.

Thinghuus is very satisfied with the development so far: "We carefully adhere to the guidelines from the authorities in all of the countries in which we operate. We have established local task forces that closely monitor the development and coordinate any necessary measures. We stay focused on reducing the risk for our employees while maintaining production and supply to markets. So far, we have not registered any COVID-19 cases and are naturally pleased with this development."

With supply and production secured, the market situation remains a challenge: "Like other suppliers in the food industry, we face a world market with reduced demand for food service and catering, while retail and on-line business seem to be performing pretty well. The outlook for businesses is uncertain and we must naturally continuously adjust to the market situation. We are grateful for having just presented record high results for the 2019 fiscal year and the company is financially strong. Also, it seems that demand from China is picking up again and our longstanding relationships with Chinese customers are proving to be an invaluable asset in these difficult times," Thinghuus concludes.