Business Plan for Argos Shipping Company

The proposal attempts to inaugurate a new shipping business to meet the demand for an overwhelming increase in the shipping services. Moreover, an increase in the level of international business has led to a rapid increase in demand for shipping services that offer reliability, convenience, speed, and promise. Moreover, the shipping industry is rapidly changing and growing because of the rapid rate of international trade, however, it is still pertinent to realize that shipping industry involves a lot of money because the business is competitive and capital intensive. More importantly, starting the shipping business requires having in-depth knowledge of container, import, and export, and logistics industries. Despite our intention to start the shipping business, we still need a business plan to realize our goal.

A business plan is one of the strategies that can assist a start-up company in succeeding in the shipping business, and one of the important aspects of the business plan is the funding to start the business.

The objective of this document is to write a business plan to start the Argos Shipping Company.

Initial Budget

The initial budget will be $75 Million and we aim to buy the new ship to start the operation. However, we will like to buy a container ship that will transport containers from one country to the other. We aim to buy the ULVC (Ultra Large Container Vessel) of 41 capacity, and the length will be 366 meters (1,200 ft) with 49m (160.7 ft). The ship will have a capacity of 18,270 TEU, and will be able to transport the Maersk Triple E. class to different destinations. Since the business is capital intensive and will involve a lot of funding to start, we will lease a ship to evaluate business profitability before we start the business in full scale. However, we will use the business and marketing strategy to achieve high profitability...
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Initially, we will focus on the niche market, and underserved routes to serve unmet demand. Moreover, we aim to use up-to-date technology to identify the shortest possible routes to reduce the costs of operations as well as reducing low marketing costs with maximum efficiency to deploy resources.

Justification of Flag, Registration Procedure, and P&I Club

Since our business is located in the United States, we will need to register our merchant ship in Luxembourg under the flag of convenience to reduce our operating costs as well as avoiding the regulations of our home country. We will register in Luxembourg flag using their national flag to assist in determining the legal jurisdictions to operate and determine our tax obligation. The benefit of declaring our flag of convenience is to reduce our tax costs and operating costs. We will register our shipping business in accordance with Luxembourg "article 5 of the Luxembourg Maritime Act 1990." (Luxembourg Maritime Administration, 2017 p 1). We will use P&I (Protection and indemnity) insurance to protect our business from unforeseen business risks. We will join a P&I Club to allow us in risk pooling, and to source information that will assist us managing our business effectively.

Certificates needed to Start the Operation

Our certificates for the shipping business are as follows:

We have International Tonnage Certificate of 1969 that determines our net tonnage in accordance with Article 7, Tonnage Convention. We also have the "International Load Line Certificate" to operate the shipping business.

Choice of Crew Members

Our crew member will consist of officers, specialist technicians, and lower level crew.

Category

Crew Per Vessel

Average Salary per Month

Nationality

Crews

Master…