Almi Tankers is a relatively new oil tanker management company. It began its operations as a small tanker company in April 2009 managing only two large crude oil tanker vessels. The company’s expansion plan included the management of fourteen additional large oil tankers from 2011 to 2018. In addition, the people employed at its headquarters tripled, accompanied by the recruitment of about six hundred new seafarers to crew the new vessels. Today, Almi Tankers transports around 150 million barrels of oil around the world annually.
The transportation of oil and its products by sea is an inherently risky activity, potentially dangerous for the environment and the health and safety of the people involved in the operations. The company is focussed on very high health, safety, security, quality, and environmental measures to meet the demanding needs of its customers - the major Oil Companies such as Shell, ExxonMobil, and BP.
The prevalent leadership style throughout shipping has been that of a command and control, based on mostly rigid procedures and processes, both ashore and especially aboard the vessels. This reflects the vertical hierarchy of maritime ranks and the related allocation of responsibilities and tasks.
To help the organisation achieve the highest possible standards in what is a highly competitive market, Almi Tankers identified that a different mindset, capability, and leadership was needed to cope with the challenges of the future. At an individual level, the objective was to ensure that its leaders developed stronger self-awareness, improved critical decision making and gained the confidence and leadership capability to encourage employees to be the best they can be. At an organisational level, Almi Tankers recognised that it needed a leadership culture that was more empowering and team led.
The CEO of Almi Tankers, Captain Stylianos Dimouleas explains: 'We need our people at all levels to lead the way and be role models on our journey to safety excellence and incident free operations. Human error is the cause of 75% of the incidents and accidents worldwide. Operational integrity and safety are our top priority and we want all people to be leaders, and consequently become safety leaders. Learning to unlearn and relearn along with the adoption of an agile “growth” mindset as opposed to a “fixed” mindset is, we believe, the path to eliminating incidents and making the difference in our industry.'