A vetting clearance is a commercial decision wearing a technical uniform. The charterer is not asking whether your ship is legal — flag and class have already answered that. They are asking whether they are willing to put their cargo, their terminal slot and their name behind this particular hull, managed by this particular operator, for this particular voyage. That is a much narrower question, it is answered against criteria the charterer publishes and the owner rarely reads, and it is answered in hours rather than days.
This guide walks the clearance chain from nomination to acceptance: what is screened and in what order, where age and condition assessment gate the decision, how terminal feedback from a voyage you have already completed affects the next one, and which rejection triggers sit entirely within an owner’s control.
Vetting and charterer acceptance · commercial guide
Nobody fails vetting on the day. They fail it on a record that was already written.
Each stage can stop the nomination on its own. Most owners prepare hard for the second stage and never look at the fifth.
Know where your fleet stands before the nomination goes in
Vessel vetting clearance: what a charterer is actually deciding
Clearance is permission for a named vessel to perform a named piece of business, granted by a charterer or an oil major’s vetting department, which typically holds sole authority to approve ships, owners, managers, ship-to-ship providers and terminals. It is not a certificate and it is not transferable: the same ship can be cleared by one charterer and refused by another on the same day, because the criteria are each company’s own.
What flag, class and port state answer
Whether the ship meets the statutory and classification standard. A binary, backward-looking question with a certificate at the end of it.
is not
What a vetting clearance answers
Whether this charterer is willing to accept the commercial and reputational risk of using this ship, under this operator, for this cargo and this terminal. A judgement, forward-looking, with no certificate and a short shelf life.
The practical consequence is that a ship can hold every statutory certificate in perfect order and still be unusable to a large part of the market. Compliance is the entry ticket; clearance is the business.
The vetting clearance chain, stage by stage
The order matters, because each stage is cheaper to run than the one after it. Screening is automated and costs the charterer nothing, so it happens first and it eliminates the most candidates.
Gate 1
Automated screening
The nomination is run against the charterer’s rules engine: ship type, age, size, class, flag, P and I cover, ownership and management. Most refusals happen here, before a human reads the name of the ship.
Gate 2
Inspection currency
Is there a recent, acceptable inspection report, and what does it say? An out-of-date report is treated as no report, and a current report full of repeat observations is often worse than a stale one.
Gate 3
Age and condition assessment
Age thresholds, condition assessment ratings for hull, machinery and cargo systems, and whether a physical inspection is required before the ship can be considered at all.
Gate 4
Operator and casualty history
Detentions, incidents and the performance of the technical manager across their whole fleet. This is the stage where a ship is refused for something that happened on a different vessel.
Gate 5
Terminal fit and feedback
Whether the ship physically suits the berth, and what the last terminal said about her after she sailed. Feedback from a voyage already completed lands here.
Charterer acceptance criteria: age is the first gate
Age is the single most consequential criterion because it is applied automatically and it cannot be argued with. The thresholds below come from a published oil major acceptance standard and are representative rather than universal — every charterer sets its own — but the shape is consistent across the market.
15 years
The threshold at which tankers become unsuitable for new time charters and contracts of affreightment under the standard examined, with limited exceptions out to 18 years where the ship holds a CAP 1 rating and has been physically inspected. Stainless steel or clad cargo tanks are treated more generously, remaining suitable to 20 years.
20 years
Condition assessment becomes mandatory rather than advantageous. A minimum CAP 2 rating is required for hull, machinery and cargo systems, and one major charterer applies that minimum from 20 years of age or by the fourth special survey, whichever comes first.
20 to 24 years
Size limits appear alongside age. In the standard examined, tankers in this band exceeding 40,000 summer deadweight are unsuitable regardless of condition, which removes most of the larger tonnage from consideration at a stroke.
25 years
A hard stop for tankers. OBO vessels reach the same point ten years earlier, at 15 years. Beyond the stop there is no appeal route and no condition assessment that recovers the position.
CAP ratings and structural standards in vessel vetting
The Condition Assessment Programme is how an older ship buys its way back into consideration. It is a voluntary class survey producing a rating for hull, machinery and cargo systems, and it is the mechanism charterers use to distinguish a well-maintained twenty-year-old from an average one.
What it covers
Hull structure, machinery and cargo systems assessed separately, each carrying its own rating. A good hull rating does not rescue a poor machinery rating.
How long it lasts
A CAP has a maximum validity of three years from the date of the survey. An expired CAP returns the ship to the age band it was in before, with no credit for the money spent.
Where CAP 1 matters
The exception routes above the normal age limit generally require CAP 1 plus a physical inspection, not CAP 2. The gap between the two ratings is the difference between a fixture and a refusal.
Cargo-driven conditions
Some cargoes carry their own requirement. In the standard examined, tankers over 20,000 deadweight carrying heavy fuel oil must hold CAP 1 and have been physically inspected, irrespective of age.
Inspection currency: SIRE, CDI and the validity window
Charterers do not inspect every ship themselves. They rely on the industry inspection regimes — SIRE for tankers, CDI for chemical and gas carriers — and on their own physical inspections where the ship sits outside routine parameters.
Two things determine whether an inspection report helps you. The first is currency: reports age out, and a charterer may treat a recent report, inside roughly six months, as substituting for their own physical inspection only in exceptional circumstances. The second is content, and this is where owners misread the situation most often. A report with observations is normal. A report whose observations repeat those of the previous report is a different signal entirely, because it says the management system did not act on what it was told — which is precisely what the charterer is trying to assess.
The repeat observation is the one that costs you the fixture
Marine Inspection holds every finding against the vessel with its corrective action and close-out evidence, so a repeat observation is visible to you months before an inspector finds it again — across the whole fleet.
RightShip’s inspection age trigger and what changes in April 2026
On the dry bulk side the equivalent mechanism is RightShip’s inspection age trigger, and it is tightening on a published schedule that owners of older tonnage need in their planning now.
14 yrs
Starting point
›
13 yrs
Phase 1, from 2025
›
12 yrs
Phase 2, from 1 April 2026
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10 yrs
End point of the rollout
From 1 April 2026, dry bulk and general cargo vessels of 12 years and older without a valid RightShip inspection are caught. The consequence is specific and commercial rather than regulatory: the safety score is downgraded to 2 out of 5, and the vessel cannot pass a vetting nomination until an acceptable inspection has been completed. For a ship trading on short-notice fixtures, that is the difference between being nominated and not being looked at.
The rollout runs in four phases from 14 years down to 10. If your fleet has tonnage approaching 12 years, the inspection needs booking against the April date rather than against the anniversary, because an inspection completed late does not restore a score retrospectively in time for a fixture already lost.
Terminal questionnaires and feedback reports: the part owners forget
Two mechanisms sit at the far end of the chain and neither is an inspection, which is why they get overlooked.
Before the berth
Terminal questionnaire
Raised by the terminal as part of ship scheduling. The master or agent receives a pre-populated form asking for specific vessel information — mooring configuration, loading and deballasting rates, helicopter suitability — before berthing. A vessel without an acceptable, validated questionnaire may simply be refused entry to the terminal, whatever its vetting status.
After the berth
Feedback report
Submitted by the terminal or operator once the vessel has sailed, recording how the call actually went. It becomes part of the operational history used when assessing the ship’s suitability in future vettings, and negative feedback is pursued to resolution rather than filed.
The asymmetry is worth sitting with. An inspection is an event the ship prepares for. A feedback report is a verdict on a day the ship was not being assessed at all — cargo rates, mooring, communication, paperwork at the gangway, how the crew handled a problem. It then shapes the next nomination, weeks later, when nobody on board remembers the call.
What each information source contributes to a vetting decision
The sources below are read together, and they carry different weight. The right-hand column is the useful part: what that source is actually being used to infer.
Source
What it provides
What the charterer infers from it
Industry inspection report
A structured assessment of the ship and crew at a point in time
Whether the management system detects and fixes its own problems, judged mainly on whether observations repeat
Port state control history
Deficiencies and detentions across the ship and the operator
How the ship performs when nobody friendly is watching; detentions are read against the manager, not just the hull
Condition assessment rating
An independent view of hull, machinery and cargo system condition
Whether an older ship has been maintained above her age or merely kept in class
Class and flag record
Society, conditions of class, and any history of changing either
Stability of oversight; repeated class changes in a short period invite a physical inspection
Terminal feedback
How recent calls actually went, from the berth’s point of view
Operational competence on an ordinary day, which no inspection schedule can rehearse
Manager and ownership data
Who technically manages the ship and what else they run
Fleet-wide standard; a change of technical manager resets the ship’s standing entirely
Casualty and incident record
Events, their causes and what followed
Whether the organisation learns, measured by what changed after the event rather than by the event itself
Each charterer weights these differently and publishes its own criteria. Where you trade regularly, reading that company’s published acceptance standard is worth more than any general guidance, including this page.
Vetting rejection triggers that owners control
Some refusals are structural — the ship is the age she is. These are not. Each one below is a decision or an omission somewhere in the organisation.
Two detentions with the same technical operator inside two years
→
Rejection under the standard examined — and it attaches to the operator, so a clean ship pays for a sister vessel’s record
The same deficiency found three times across physical inspections
→
Read as a management system that does not close findings, which is the single thing vetting exists to detect
Change of technical manager
→
Suitability status is lost and the ship is handled as though newly built, with the screening and attendance that implies
Letting a condition assessment lapse
→
The ship falls back into the age band she was in before, with the survey cost already spent and nothing to show for it
An unresolved negative terminal feedback report
→
Carried forward into future assessments; resolution is pursued, so silence does not make it expire
Class society outside IACS, or repeated class changes
→
Outside acceptance under many standards, or triggers a case-by-case physical inspection before anything else proceeds
What a vetting rejection costs
The immediate cost is the fixture, and that is the one owners quote. The expensive part is what follows it.
The exclusion period
Under the standard examined, a vessel judged unacceptable cannot call that company’s terminals for at least the following six months. One refusal removes a counterparty from the ship’s trading pattern for half a year.
The narrowing market
Charterers observe each other’s behaviour and share screening data. A ship that has been refused once is screened more carefully everywhere, which is not a formal consequence but is a real one.
The operator contagion
Criteria attach to the technical manager as well as the hull. A refusal driven by detention history affects every ship in that manager’s fleet, including ships with spotless records of their own.
The recovery cost
Getting back in usually means a physical inspection, a condition assessment, or both, plus the shore attendance that goes with them — spent at short notice, at whatever yard and inspector availability allows.
Preparing for vetting clearance: the ninety days before
Clearance preparation is not a week of tidying. The record being assessed was written over the preceding months, so the work has to start while there is still record left to influence.
Day 90Pull the last two inspection reports and mark every observation that appears in both. Those repeats are the findings that will decide the next report, so they get owners, dates and evidence now.
Day 75Check the ship’s position against the age and condition assessment thresholds of the charterers you actually trade with, and against the April 2026 dry bulk trigger if it applies. Book surveys against those dates, not against anniversaries.
Day 60Review the operator’s detention record across the fleet, not just this ship. If there is a second detention inside the two-year window, that is a fleet problem being carried by every hull.
Day 45Resolve any outstanding terminal feedback. Unanswered negative feedback does not age out, and the resolution is pursued whether or not the owner engages.
Day 10Walk the ship as an inspector would, in the order they will: accommodation and documentation first, then machinery spaces, then deck and cargo systems. Record what you find and fix it, so the close-out evidence exists before the inspection rather than after it.
Permission from a charterer for a named vessel to perform specific business. It is granted by that company’s vetting function, which typically holds sole authority to approve ships, owners, managers, ship-to-ship providers and terminals. It is not a certificate and it does not transfer between charterers.
How is vetting different from port state control?
Port state control asks whether the ship meets the statutory standard, and the answer is backward-looking and binary. Vetting asks whether a commercial counterparty is willing to accept the risk of using this ship under this operator for this cargo, which is a judgement with no certificate and a short shelf life.
At what age does a tanker become hard to fix?
Under the published standard examined here, 15 years is the threshold for new time charters and contracts of affreightment, with exceptions out to 18 years on a CAP 1 rating plus physical inspection, and 25 years is a hard stop. Thresholds vary by charterer, so the company’s own published criteria govern.
How long is a CAP rating valid?
A maximum of three years from the date of the CAP survey. Once it expires the ship returns to the position she held before it, so the survey has to be planned as a recurring cost rather than a one-off.
What changes for dry bulk vessels in April 2026?
RightShip’s inspection age trigger moves to 12 years from 1 April 2026 for dry bulk and general cargo vessels. A vessel at or above that age without a valid inspection has its safety score downgraded to 2 out of 5 and cannot pass a vetting nomination until an acceptable inspection is completed.
What is a terminal feedback report?
A report submitted by a terminal or operator after the vessel has sailed, recording how the call went. It forms part of the operational history used in future vetting assessments, and negative feedback is pursued to resolution rather than simply filed.
Does changing technical manager affect vetting?
Yes, substantially. Under the standard examined a change of technical manager causes the ship to lose her suitability status and be handled as though newly built, with the additional screening and attendance that implies.
How long does a rejection last?
Under the standard examined, a vessel judged unacceptable cannot call that company’s terminals for at least six months. The informal effects last longer, because a refused ship is screened more carefully by other charterers as well.
Before the next nomination
Make the record say what you would want it to say
Marine Inspection holds every observation, corrective action and close-out against the vessel and the fleet — so repeat findings surface early, survey and inspection dates are visible against the thresholds that matter, and the record a charterer reads is one you have already read.
