Today we woke up early and had to meet with our group at 9:30am. It was a day full of site visits to the companies we had researched in preparation for our trip! We started the day going to Bernard Schulte Ship-management Training Center (BSM). This was really cool to experience especially since my group (group 2😅) did research on this business. We went to a room where we learned in depth about the different training centers and vessels that BSM primarily works with. After, we got to travel to the simulation rooms where they created different real life scenarios that could be played out using VR and advanced technology. They were also so hospitable and provided us refreshments after we went to the dock and viewed the ships and the machinery. This was our first site visit of the day!
The second site visit was at another ship management company. This company is known as the Columbia Ship Management (CSM). For this company, it was around a 20 minute drive from BSM, and when we first entered we listened to the basics about the company. We learned about their values, mission statement, and future goals as innovators within the maritime industry. I learned so much about how it’s continuously evolving and I was surprised to learn how ambitious and forth moving CSM was in their corporate endeavors. They are a company who are truly leaders in this industry as they have over 22,000 ship staff placed in location around the world. After some questions were answered, we got to go to the room where people of all different career backgrounds worked together in checking ships and their emissions in certain regions of the world. I didn’t realize that there were so many logistics and legal factors that went into the maritime business and it was cool to experience that first hand!
Before heading to our final site visit, we grabbed a quick lunch in Old City before rushing to the bus! For our last stop of the day, we headed to Medochemie a pharmaceutical company. Personally, I thought that this site visit was really cool because we got to tour such a large portion of their facility. I learned that Medochemie has an extensive supply chain process and how critical each step is to continually provide to their consumers. At first, I didn’t realize how large and crucial this company was but I learned that they contribute around 28% of all Cyprus’s total industrial exports! The most interesting part was getting to see the warehouse located in the basement of the company. We all had to dress up in disposable lab coats and wear shoe covers in order to keep the warehouse clean and non contaminated. In the warehouse, they told us that it could hold 7700 pallets of pharmaceutical supply and it was HUGE! There were also these sliding doors that would block off certain regions of the warehouse to protect the materials in case of fire. And for this, they have multiple yearly tests to ensure the safety of the products. It was very cool to experience and learn about these site visits in person especially with the background knowledge we had and I’m excited for where we go tomorrow!
