The Marcura Group, parent of sister company, DA-Desk® today formally launched CP-Desk® an independent service provider that sets a new standard for reducing risk and managing charter party costs. CP-Desk focuses solely on one labour-intensive, time-consuming administrative aspect of the maritime shipping industry — charter party management. This enables owners, operators, and brokers to concentrate their time and attention on vital operational issues, while mitigating the risks of commencing voyages without a duly signed contract.
Unlike online solutions, CP-Desk brings a human touch to this crucial, yet often undervalued process whose disregard can end up costing a maritime shipping company a significant amount of money and untold man-hours. CP-Desk provides a trained, dedicated team for its CP-AuditTM and CP-DrawTM services. The teams are charged with ensuring the accuracy of the charter parties and providing key management reports.
THE CP-DESK SERVICES
CP-Audit is designed to minimize risk for owners and operators by eliminating charter party errors. The service features a dedicated team that reads, verifies and audits the pro forma, final recap and charter party drafted by a broker. Olam International is the latest client to use the CP-Audit service.
According to Bianca Knight, Associate General Manager – Shipping & Freight at Olam, “Charter party checking and administration is often put aside to focus on more pressing operational matters. Olam chose to work with CP-Desk because of our excellent relationship with DA-Desk and the strong administrative support that they have provided for this part of our business. The quality of support we receive and the ease of integration with our existing systems enables our small team to increase effectiveness and focus on operational and not administrative matters.”
CP-Desk also provides CP-Draw, a service for brokers that focuses on the actual drawing up charter parties. Like CP-Audit, this service provides dedicated teams that work closely with clients to ensure that charter parties exactly reflect the terms of agreement. The disciplined CP-Desk process remedies the all too common industry practice of fixing the next business 'as per last,' that allows errors to flow unchecked from one charter
party to the next. “One of the many reasons we make use of the excellent CP-Draw service is that it gives us more time to focus on fixing vessels for our local clients, rather than on charter parties,” said Jorgen Sorensen, Director/Partner at Dahl & Holmegaard A/S in Copenhagen, Denmark. “We receive a very high standard of service and a very professional approach from the CP-Desk team. You can say that we are a satisfied customer!”
Stated Captain Errol Gonsalves, managing director of CP- Desk, “As a Marcura Group company, like DA-Desk, we are a completely independent service provider with no ties to owners, charterers or brokers. As we began looking at the issue of charter parties in 2011 we strongly believed that our underlying philosophy would greatly benefits owners, charterers and brokers in the drafting, verification and overall reporting of charter parties. Today that has proven to be the case; our customers have confidence that we can handle their sensitive information without question.”
“We also believe that in today’s environment, charter parties require the personal attention of trained professionals, rather than shipping trainees as is often the case.Thus, we established CP-Desk to give charter parties the expert attention they need and to help owners, charterers and brokers limit their exposure to expensive liability issues.“
To date, CP-Desk has signed on three major shipowners, including J. Lauritzen, and ten shipbrokers among them Dahl & Holmegaard & Bidsted-Yamamizu Corp.
ABOUT CP-DESK
One of the Marcura Group’s premier business service companies and sister company of DA-Desk, CP-Desk focuses on the management and key reporting of commercial maritime shipping contractual documents, specifically charter parties. Designed for owners, operators and brokers alike who need to conserve costs and concentrate resources on optimizing their business, CP-Desk is the only company that focuses solely on charter party management tasks through its trained and dedicated maritime desk and technology. As such, CP-Desk sets a new standard for reducing risk and managing charter party costs.