· 6 min read
What is Equasis? How to find a ship manager by IMO number
Learn what Equasis is, what its free registration shows about a ship, and how to find a vessel's ship manager step by step using its IMO number.
- Equasis
- Ship manager
- IMO number
In short
Equasis is a free, publicly funded ship information system launched in 2000 by the European Commission and the French maritime administration. After free registration, you search by IMO number and see the ship's flag, class, P&I and PSC data, plus the ship manager, ISM manager and registered owner under Management detail. Equasis does not show e-mail addresses.
Equasis is an official ship information system where you can look up, free of charge, which companies manage a vessel by entering its IMO number. Once registered, you search the IMO number and read the “Management detail” section on the ship page, which lists the ship manager, ISM manager and registered owner with names and addresses. Equasis does not provide e-mail addresses, so you have to find contact details separately.
What is Equasis and who runs it?
Equasis (Electronic Quality Shipping Information System) is a database that brings safety-related information on the world’s merchant fleet together on one website. It was developed jointly by the European Commission and the French maritime administration and went live on May 17, 2000. Its goal is to reduce substandard shipping and improve transparency, and by its own description it has no commercial purpose.
A Supervisory Committee of maritime administrations that signed the 2002 Equasis Memorandum of Understanding decides on and funds the project. IMO has observer status on the committee. The Management Unit, which runs daily operations, has been hosted by the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA) in Lisbon since 2009, while the technical unit is based in Saint-Malo, France. You can read the background on the Equasis overview page.
Equasis does not create data. It combines information from more than 56 providers: ship and company particulars come from IHS Maritime, port state control data from regimes such as the Paris MoU and the Tokyo MoU, and further data from classification societies and P&I clubs.
What information does Equasis show?
Equasis covers merchant ships over 100 GT. If a data item has not been supplied to Equasis, its heading simply does not appear.
| Section | What you see |
|---|---|
| Ship info | Name, IMO number, flag, call sign, MMSI, GT, DWT, ship type, year of build, status |
| Management detail | Ship manager / commercial manager, ISM manager and registered owner, each with IMO company number, name, address and date of effect |
| Classification | Classification society, class status, last and next renewal survey |
| Safety management certificate | Issuing organization, survey date and expiry date of the Safety Management Certificate (SMC) |
| P&I information | The ship’s P&I club and inception date |
| Inspections | Port state control (PSC) inspections: country, port, date, detention, number of deficiencies |
| Ship History | Former names, flags, classification societies and company history |
Click a company name on the ship page to open “Company info.” Its “Fleet info” tab lists the other ships under the same management.
How do you find a ship manager in Equasis?
Follow these steps to find who manages a vessel:
- Open a free account. Register at equasis.org with an e-mail address that has not been used for another Equasis account. Confirm it through the link in the welcome e-mail and read the terms and conditions.
- Search by IMO number. After logging in, type the vessel’s seven-digit IMO number into the search box. You can also search by name, but you need at least three letters and may get several ships with the same name. Our IMO number guide explains how the number works.
- Confirm it is the right ship. On the “Ship info” page, compare the name, flag, MMSI and ship type with what you already know.
- Read the “Management detail” table. Each row is one role: Ship manager/Commercial manager, ISM Manager and Registered owner. Next to each role you see the company’s IMO number, name, address and “date of effect,” the date the role started.
- Open the company page. Click the company name to see its address, status (for example, Active) and the other ships it manages under “Fleet info.”
- Look up contact details elsewhere. The Equasis company page has no e-mail address. Use the name, address and country to find the company’s official website and note the business address on its contact page.
How to read the roles
According to the Equasis help page, the ship manager is the company that operates the ship on a daily basis. The ISM manager is the company responsible for the effective implementation of the ISM Code on board and is named on the ship’s Safety Management Certificate. The registered owner is the owner of the ship, and a jointly owned ship can show more than one.
All three roles can sit with one company, or they can be spread across different companies in different countries. If the registered owner’s address starts with “C/O,” the address belongs to another company, such as a ship management firm. The date in the table is the date the change took effect, not the date Equasis updated it. We compare the roles in detail in ship manager vs ISM manager vs registered owner.
What are the limits of Equasis?
No e-mail addresses. The Equasis company page shows the name, address and IMO company number, but no e-mail, phone number or website. The Equasis FAQ refers users to the WSDOnline link on the company page for contact details. That link opens a separate S&P Global portal with its own access terms.
The terms of use are binding. Information on Equasis may only be used for the user’s internal business purposes and may not be passed on to third parties. Bulk downloads, using downloaded data for financial gain and using a robot to pull large batches of data are expressly forbidden. Equasis monitors activity and can lock an account without notice when it detects misuse. According to the FAQ, accounts that look up a high number of ships or companies in a short period can also be blocked.
The data is not real time. Provider data is generally updated weekly. Neither Equasis nor its data providers accept liability for the accuracy of the data, and decisions based on it remain the user’s responsibility.
Manual work does not scale. Searching, checking roles, opening the company page, finding the website and confirming a contact address takes time even for one ship. When new vessels approach your port every day, repeating that chain by hand for each one quickly eats into your sales team’s week.
How does VesselCall automate this process?
VesselCall Outreach runs the same chain for the ports you choose:
- It uses AIS position data to detect commercial vessels (cargo, tanker, passenger) that enter the range, in nautical miles, you set around each Turkish port you select.
- It uses the vessel’s IMO number to look up the company roles in international ship databases and picks the recipient in this order: ship manager / commercial manager, ISM manager, registered owner.
- It finds the company’s business e-mail address on its official website and in search results, with AI-assisted research as a fallback. It verifies the address with an MX check and stores it in a company knowledge base, so the same company is never searched twice.
- It translates your Turkish introduction e-mail into the language of the recipient company’s country and sends it from your own company domain. Replies go straight to your inbox.
You can run sending in automatic, approval or test mode. A vessel never receives a second e-mail within 7 days, every e-mail carries a one-click opt-out link, and both the vessel and the recipient company are screened against sanctions lists. See every step on the How it works page.
