Newsmaker of the Year Award: Security Association for the Maritime Industry (SAMI)

Congratulations to SAMI for receiving the ‘Newsmaker of the Year’ award by the Lloyd’s List Global Awards 2012.

Formed in 2011 by Peter Cook, SAMI is the first organisation introduce a level of regulatory discipline and scrutiny to ensure that the maritime industry can easily identify reputable maritime security companies. They provide reassurance and guidance, where none has existed before and establishes the benchmark for standards within the industry. Prior to the UK’s decision to legalise the use of armed guards on commercial vessels in October of last year, private maritime security companies operated in a grey area of shipping. However since the legalisation the private maritime security industry still has a 100% success rate as there has yet to be an incident formally reported which involves the hijack of a vessel that has armed guards on board and piracy in the Gulf of Aden has dropped for the first time in five years. It is therefore difficult to deny the importance of this growing sector.

For the last year the GMI have been working closely with Peter Cook the founder of SAMI on the development of the new MSc Maritime Security degree programme by ensuring that the content accurately reflects that which is demanded by the industry. We thank SAMI for their help and advice and congratulate them for their well-earned award.

To find out more about SAMI visit the association website www.seasecurity.org

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