“Cook Islands aims to be a flag of choice for quality classed tonnage and superyachts,” says Glenn Armstrong of Maritime Cook Islands. He goes on to say that “We are young, ambitious and energetic and we hope to grow significantly over the coming years.”
The Flag is based in the Cook Islands in Rarotonga and is the only Small Island Developing State with a serious open register that is actually based in their home country. The advantage of this is that Maritime Cook Islands is very close to their government and has an ability to get quick and sensible answers to difficult questions that take other Flags weeks and months.
Maritime Cook Islands is the administrator of the Cook Islands Ship Register. Under an agreement with the Ministry of Transport they have delegated to them responsibility for all Flag State responsibilities under the various IMO conventions and instruments. Given this responsibility, Maritime Cook Islands has recently employed Duncan Findlay as technical director, to assist their Deputy Registrars to provide timely, sensible, technical solutions to the problems that shipowners confront on a daily basis.
Maritime Cook Islands has a network of Deputy Registrars in 24 different Agents’ offices around the world. The deputy registrars are authorised to register and certify vessels on the Cook Islands Flag provided the follow the MCI Quality Management System and use the online registry system – CIORE.
This means that clients should be able to enjoy instant service through the Deputy Registrar’s office in their region, in their time zone and in their language. The network of Deputy Registrars also means that ships can obtain documents and certificates very quickly and inexpensively by having them issued by their closest Deputy Registrar.
The Deputy Registrars are what make Maritime Cook Islands different and what give them their competitive advantage over other registries. Each Deputy Registrar is a person of standing and experience in the Maritime industry and is well known and respected in their home port.
They are typically former master mariners, or marine engineers who have come ashore and established an impressive variety of successful maritime businesses from surveying, to management to brokerage, finance and law. They know the business, they know the industry, they know the people and they are authorised to respond and act to give clients first class service.
Part of this service comes from their network of surveyors and ROs. Maritime Cook Islands hase more than 160 surveyors around the world who can attend on board to assist with issues a client may have. Cook Islands has formal agreements with the IACS Class Societies and five other selected non-IACS societies.
The Cook Islands flag has grown rapidly. They have more than 450 vessels with a total of over 1,250,000 Gross Tons registered.
