Marine towage operator Svitzer Australia confirms departure from Geelong port

International marine towage operator Svitzer is insisting it is leaving Geelong altogether despite maintaining two tug boats in port more than a month after dismissing its workforce.

INTERNATIONAL marine towage operator Svitzer is insisting it is leaving Geelong altogether despite maintaining two tug boats in port more than a month after dismissing its workforce.

Months of unsuccessful haggling over a proposed restructure of crews and wages ended abruptly in December when 17 Geelong marine masters, engineers and deck hands were handed redundancies.

Svitzer Australia, a subsidiary of the Danish giant Maersk Group, says it pulled out of Geelong after incurring unsustainable losses that were being further impacted by COVID-19.

The company is understood to have been trying to reduce the number of Geelong crews from six to three and introduce a raft of other new conditions, including changes to rostered maintenance shifts, to make the local operations more sustainable.

A former employee, who wished to remain anonymous, accused the company of being disingenuous with its negotiations, and running the business down to take a hard line stance against Geelong workers as an example to the other Australian ports in which it operates.

He said the redundancies had severely impacted on some of his former colleagues who had been left traumatised over Christmas and were facing few opportunities to continue within their industry.

It’s “about cracking unions a bit” and saying “If you don’t want to negotiate, this is what is going to happen to you”, the man said.

Svitzer Australia managing director Nicolaj Noes said the company had tried to address the losses of millions of dollar a year through a range of proposals put to employees and the unions, but these were rejected.

“Unfortunately, exiting the port resulted in 17 full-time crew positions being made redundant, with affected employees receiving generous redundancy payments totalling $4.13m, and deployment opportunities within the company.” Mr Noes said.

“We have not come to this decision lightly, and it is a result of changed market factors and our inability to respond effectively to those changes.”

The company said its two Geelong tug boats were remaining in port while Svitzer considers fleet redeployment opportunities, confirming it was definitely pulling out of Geelong altogether.

Svitzer Australia operates more than 100 vessels in Australia and Papua New Guinea.

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Originally published as Marine towage operator Svitzer Australia confirms departure from Geelong port