Before the arrival of the ship, the shipping agent will receive a nomination from the vessel owner/charterer or the upcoming port call. Once the nomination is received, the shipping agent starts to prepare for the visit of the ship. Amongst other things this procedure will include:

• Berth/Anchorage Spot booking for the vessel with the port authorities (Call announcement).
• Liaison with the various service suppliers (Courier services, Water Taxis, Ship Chandlers, Fresh Water Supply, Bunker Suppliers, Transportation services etc…) for scheduling and delivery of goods and services to the vessel.
• Liaison with the various authorities required in providing different services to the vessel (Custom, Authorities, Fire Fighting Services etc…).
• All in all the shipping agent is fully responsible and liable to ensure that ships visiting its port of operations are provided with all required goods and services in a timely, efficient and above all legally respectful manner. The services provided by a ship agent can indeed be quite complex depending on the nature and purpose of the port call.

The shipping agent needs to be properly licensed to be able to operate. The licensing requirements varies from country to country. However, the standard and common licenses required all around the world include:

1. A port license a. This document is normally awarded by the Port Authorities/Management of the country. The document is normally awarded after a thorough check of the directors and shareholders of the company to ensure that they are bona fide characters. In most countries, the applicant for the port license must also prove that it already holds nomination by vessel owner/charterers. Such proof is required at application time.
2.  Common company formation documents (Certificate of Incorporation…).

It would be very difficult to provide an exhaustive list of services provided by shipping agents as these are very much varied. It would be even more so difficult to classify these in terms of importance as most of the provided services are part of a chain of services. However, the most common types of services provided by mostly all existing shipping agents around the world include:

Crew Changes
Reception and transiting of crew personnel wither joining the ship or leaving it.

Bunkering
The shipping agent is responsible for the coordination for the delivery of bunkers between the various authorities (Port, Fire, Customs…), the vessel owner/charterer and the bunker suppliers.

Clearance and Delivery of Spares.
It is very frequent that a ship stopping at a port will need spare parts to be delivered to the ship for subsequent minor repairs by the on-board ship engineers/technicians. The shipping agent has the duty, to liaise with the ship owners, the part supplier, the forwarding company, and custom brokers etc… to ensure that the part is duly delivered in a timely fashion to the vessel.

Assistance to sick crew/Emergency Evacuations
The shipping agent is also responsible to evacuate sick/injured crew as swiftly as possible from any ship visiting the port for such purposes. The efficiency of the shipping agent filtered down through its boarding agent is here literally a factor of life or death. The shipping agency must have the right procedures put in place for handling such cases. Anything less short of professional services would spell catastrophe in such cases. Necessary medical consultation/facilities need to be timely arranged to cater for such cases. Such events do regularly happen in the shipping business.