Photo: Last year's REG Conference in Guernsey
This year's Red Ensign Group Conference will be held for the first time in Montserrat. It takes place from the 2 – 4 April, 2019. The conference is an annual gathering of the British ship registers. It meets together with representatives from UK Government in a different territory each year on a rolling basis. Members representing the British ship registers and coastal state coordinators from across the Red Ensign Group will attend the event.
The conference is a great opportunity for detailed face-to-face discussion of a wide variety of matters of shared interest and to share best practice and discuss ways to optimise performance of the British register in the international arena, both in terms of commercial success and in setting exemplary standards in meeting our international maritime obligations. It is also an opportunity to look at the challenges of meeting Coastal State obligations and share ideas of how to improve those.
But more than that is a way to get to know each other which helps the registers work together to drive the success of the total British registered tonnage, which at over 50 million gross registered tons is one of the world's larger registers with a real part to play at the International Maritime Organization and in influencing international maritime matters.
This year's conference will continue to focus on the group's ability to meet the requirements of the IMO Instruments Implementation Code (IIIC) and some the challenges of forthcoming requirements including those of coastal states ahead of its IMO audit in the next couple of years.