Simon Bennett

39 years ago, Simon Bennett joined Swire Pacific Offshore (SPO) which provides marine support services to the global offshore oil and gas exploration and production industry. Following several voyages as Master, he came ashore in 1991, working as HSE and Country Manager in Brunei, HSE Manager with Swire Production Testers working with their rig-based Early Production Systems for Maersk in Qatar and Shell in Iran, Marketing Manager in Dubai, before he moved to his last but one job as General Director,managing the contracts and operations of SPO’s three new icebreaking Platform Supply Vessels in the Russian Far East.

Returning to the warmth of Singapore in 2008, he wore the hat of the GM for Sustainable Development for both SPO (sold in 2022), and since late 2010 also for The China Navigation Company (renamed Swire Shipping in 2021), the Swire group’s privately owned deep-sea container and bulk shipping company (the latter split out as a separate company within the Swire group: Swire Bulk, in 2022). SPO, Swire Shipping and Swire Bulk all had/have their Operational Headquarters in Singapore, and have responsibly recycled 18 ships in the past 5 years in both China and India.

Simon retired, after more than 38 years with the Swire group marine companies at the end of Oct 2022, but has been retained as a Sustainability Adviser covering many of the legacy, but non-decarbonisation, areas of sustainability. He has been on the Board of Trustees of the Sustainable Shipping Initiative, for which Swire Shipping was both the founding member in Asia, and was a founding member of the steering group of the Ship Recycling Transparency Initiative (SRTI). He is also on the board of the World Ocean Council, a member of the BIMCO ESG group, and working with the Singapore Standards Organisation as the Singapore Shipping Association representative to develop an environmental standard.