Nourishing Wellness: A New Initiative to Improve Seafarers' Health with NYK Group
We are pleased to announce that we have launched a well-being initiative to improve the health of our seafarers through the power of food. We have been working with NYK and NYK Group companies, including MarCoPay Inc.,NYK-Fil Ship Management, Inc. and HACHIUMA STEAMSHIP Co., LTD. to improve the wellbeing of seafarers in collaboration with experts from outside the shipping industry. This initiative is our first attempt to focus on seafarers' health through better nutrition and meal planning.
In cooperation with HACHIUMA STEAMSHIP, a ship management company within the NYK Group, we have utilized frozen foods made for microwave use from a major Japanese food company. These meals are carefully designed to offer a good balance of nutrition and calories without sacrificing seafarers’ enjoyment of having tasty meals. We have started the trial on board. The 14-day trial has already begun on vessels managed by HACHIUMA STEAMSHIP and is expected to wrap up by the end of this October.
Having good meals is one of the great pleasures of seafarers, and at the same time, it is said to be highly effective in reducing stress. While it's not easy to alter ingrained dietary habits, this initiative is a small but "first step" toward changing their health awareness. We recognize that it is an important issue that requires certain long period of time and additional costs.
Looking ahead, we plan to study various options with our partners, keeping the focus on "easy to continue" and plan to achieve our goal of improvement and maintenance of seafarers' health through a holistic approach that includes the establishment of incentives to encourage moderate exercise and health maintenance, medical intervention, and health condition monitoring methods. While we are still in the trial phase, limited to a small portion of the vessels in our fleet, we are considering this initiative will expand not only collaboration within NYK's fleet and the shipping industry, but eventually into a large-scale deployment beyond the boundaries of the industry.