Corporate Profile

Seacare Co-operative

Seacare Co-operative Limited (Seacare) was formed in May 1994 with the founding mission “to help and benefit Singapore seamen and their families through more work opportunities and appropriate investment projects”. The background to the setting up of Seacare was the growing number of Singapore seamen displaced from their sea jobs and the consequently adverse effect on the viability of the Singapore Organisation of Seamen (SOS). SOS then jointly with the National Trades Union Congress formed Seacare as a co-operative platform to both promote the welfare of Singapore seafarers and help itself.

Since our founding, we have always sought to balance our need to be economically viable as a co-operative enterprise against our aim of helping Singapore seafarers as job seekers or consumers. As a means of ensuring viability, we incorporate companies within our co-operative framework for greater effectiveness and efficiency in conducting our business activities.

In 1995, we set up the Seacare Holdings Private Limited as a wholly-owned subsidiary, to provide a convenient umbrella for our commercial activities. We then instituted a second holding corporation in November 1999. Seacare Foundation Private Limited handles activities that pertain more to the obligations of SOS, the Founder Member, to its seafarers than to merely commercial dealings.

We now have our own family of business enterprises, comprising five distinct clusters. Through the seamless merging of corporate forms and co-operative ideals, our Seacare Group of companies is constantly seeking new openings that are likely to be advantageous to Singapore seafarers or Seacare. In accordance with this active investment policy, our Group sets up new companies on our own or in joint venture with other corporations and also broadens the scope of our subsidiaries. As a business organisation, it is only rational for our Group to seek to diversify our activities into advantageous areas, whether locally or overseas.

To reinvent ourselves , review our aims and stay relevant in the business and co-operative movement, we have adopted a new mission statement in November 2004 with a three-pronged approach.

For our invaluable contributions to both the Co-operative and Labour Movement, we were conferred the Commendation Plaque by the Singapore National Co-operative Federation in July 2005, and was presented the Plaque of Commendation by the National Trades Union Congress in April 2008.