Webinar summary – Responsible shipping: Uplifting marine safety and seafarer welfare in our supply chains

30 August 2026

Shipping is an essential link in the global aluminium value chain. For companies sourcing, producing and using aluminium, responsible business practices therefore do not end when material leaves a mine, refinery, smelter or manufacturing facility. How products and raw materials are transported – and the conditions experienced by the people who make that transportation possible – are also important considerations for responsible sourcing and human rights due diligence.

In ASI’s latest 45 Minutes on… webinar, Laure Baratgin, Head of Commercial Operations at Rio Tinto, and Francesca Fairbairn, Shipping Lead at the Institute for Human Rights and Business (IHRB), explored the safety, welfare and human rights challenges facing seafarers, and the leverage that cargo owners and other value chain actors can use to raise standards across the shipping industry.

Safety and welfare are closely connected

The scale of the safety challenge remains significant. Figures presented during the session from the International Labour Organization’s Global Register of Fatalities at Sea recorded 449 seafarer deaths across 66 countries in 2024 — more than one life lost every day. More than 30% occurred on bulk carriers.

This has particular relevance for mining and metals. Dry bulk accounts for around 42% of shipping activity, and more than 80% of dry bulk cargoes originate from these industries.

Many critical risks arise during routine activities such as working at height, mooring operations, working in confined spaces and exposure to falling objects or uncontrolled releases of energy. But managing these risks cannot be separated from seafarer welfare. Fatigue, workload, isolation, long periods away from family and access to physical and mental healthcare can all affect a person’s ability to work safely.

A mature approach to safety therefore considers the whole working environment: physical safety, health and mental wellbeing together.

From minimum requirements to a common definition of good practice

International Maritime Organization requirements and the Maritime Labour Convention (MLC) provide important regulatory foundations. But regulation sets a baseline, and continuing fatalities, injuries and rights violations point to the need for companies to look beyond minimum compliance.

One challenge is the fragmented nature of dry bulk shipping. Different cargo owners can place different expectations on ship owners and operators, potentially adding complexity without necessarily improving outcomes.

Greater alignment around credible industry frameworks offers another approach. The Dry Bulk Management Standard (DryBMS) provides a framework for assessing the maturity of safety management in dry bulk operations, while the Delivering on Seafarers’ Rights Code of Conduct, developed by IHRB, the Sustainable Shipping Initiative and the Rafto Foundation for Human Rights, provides a common framework for seafarers’ rights and welfare.

The objective should not be to create ever more company-specific standards, but to align around a shared understanding of good practice: ask questions and support initiatives working to improve standards and address risks on board.

Human rights risks can begin before a seafarer boards a ship

Safety is only part of the picture. Recruitment fees, for example, remain widespread despite being prohibited under the MLC. Seafarers can incur substantial debts simply to secure employment, creating risks of exploitation before they even board a vessel. Recruitment practices can also intersect with safety if hiring decisions are influenced by who is able or willing to pay rather than who is best qualified for a role.

Other risks include low or delayed wages, excessive workloads and inadequate crewing levels, limited shore leave and connectivity, piracy and conflict, criminalisation of seafarers and vessel abandonment.

The international nature of shipping can also make responsibility and access to remedy difficult to navigate. A vessel may be owned in one country, flagged in another, crewed by people from several others and operate between ports under different jurisdictions. Seafarers themselves may be employed through crewing agencies rather than directly by the vessel owner.

For companies conducting human rights due diligence, formal compliance alone may therefore not provide a complete picture of conditions on board.

What evidence can companies ask for?

Companies do not need to develop their own auditing system to begin asking better questions of logistics suppliers.

Collective bargaining agreements can provide an important first indication of protections for seafarers. The Delivering on Seafarers’ Rights Code of Conduct is accompanied by a self-assessment questionnaire that identifies evidence companies can request and allows progress to be assessed across basic, intermediate and excellence levels. RightShip’s Crew Welfare Self-Assessment Tool provides another route for ship owners and managers to assess performance and demonstrate improvement.

RightShip also brings together vessel-level information covering areas such as safety, crew welfare and greenhouse gas performance, helping charterers, cargo owners and financial institutions incorporate these considerations into commercial and due diligence decisions.

There are still significant gaps. Developing robust indicators and credible verification of seafarers’ rights is challenging, and work is continuing across the sector to strengthen the evidence available. IHRB, SSI and Rafto are working with ship operators, charterers, trade associations, investors, brokers and insurers on indicators that can better demonstrate whether good practice is being implemented in reality.

Turning commercial relationships into leverage

The ability to influence shipping conditions varies according to where a company sits in the value chain. First-tier charterers have the most direct leverage. In dry bulk, this is significant: while the sector is fragmented, the ten largest charterers — including Rio Tinto — account for around 30% of the segment.

Rio Tinto’s Designated Owners and Operators (DOO) programme illustrates how this leverage can extend beyond vessel vetting and inspections. Launched with five members in 2023, the programme has grown to 30 shipping partners representing close to half of Rio Tinto’s chartered volumes.

The programme uses longer-term relationships with owners and operators to support incident sharing, learning from best practice, crew seminars and continual improvement in safety and welfare. Rather than creating another proprietary standard, it builds on recognised frameworks such as DryBMS and the Delivering on Seafarers’ Rights Code of Conduct.

This distinction is important. Inspections and vetting remain essential, but they provide a view at a particular moment. Safe and responsible operations are built continuously through leadership, working culture, opportunities for crews to speak up and the way organisations learn from incidents and near misses.

Leverage extends beyond charterers

Companies further downstream may have less direct contact with ship owners, but they can still have some influence. Depending on what they buy and how their supply chains are structured, they can ask suppliers how shipping risks are managed, favour suppliers that apply recognised shipping standards, and use responsible sourcing and product stewardship systems to transmit expectations further up the value chain.

Industry associations and standards organisations can support that influence by connecting responsible shipping expectations to wider responsible sourcing frameworks. For sectors heavily dependent on maritime transport, raising awareness and promoting uptake of responsible shipping programs can help embed these in companies’ responsible production and sourcing efforts.

Financial institutions also have leverage. Lenders and investors can ask for evidence of performance and use due diligence tools when making financing decisions. Work is underway to strengthen this area further, including discussions at IHRB around human rights indicators for shipping finance.

From responsible production to responsible delivery

The broader message is simple: include transportation in supply chain thinking.

Responsible sourcing often concentrates on a product itself — what it is made from, where it was produced and under what conditions. Yet the journey between those stages can involve seafarers, truck drivers, port and dock workers, shipyard workers and others whose working conditions may otherwise remain largely invisible.

No single actor can address these challenges alone. Charterers have substantial influence, but ship owners, operators, customers, industry associations, standards organisations, investors and lenders all have a role.

If major cargo owners and other value chain actors align behind common management standards and a shared definition of what good looks like, they can create a stronger market expectation for responsible shipping.

That is how responsible production and sourcing can begin to extend beyond mine and factory gates — to the responsible delivery of materials and products throughout the value chain.

If you want to find out more about how IHRB and SSI are bringing the industry segments together for this common goal, and/or get involved in the conversation, please get in touch with Francesca.

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