Recruitment agency Spinnaker gearing up for superport’s opening later this year Spinnaker, the shipping industry agency, has a whole fleet’s worth of jobs on its books .

Career opportunities range from chartering to naval architecture. Spinnaker is also actively recruiting recruiters to swell its own workforce.

Shipping professionals already work in a sellers’ market, with more job vacancies available than there are qualified people to fill them. Rachel Morgan, Spinnaker’s head of marketing, says: “The skills shortage is huge.”

The opening of the giant new London Gateway port in the autumn will increase demand still further and Spinnaker is gearing up to bridge the gap.

The company is a local success story. It was founded in Leigh 1997 by maritime lawyer Phil Parry and barrister Steve Cox.

Steve says: “We saw an extraordinary hole in the market. We realised there was no recruitment agency that dealt with shore based shipping jobs.”

The opportunity provided by this gap was big.

British ships’ crews may no longer rule the waves in terms of numbers, but behind every shipping movement on the high seas sits an army of office-based traders, charterers, shipbrokers, operations mangers, analysts, and other landlubbers.

Then there are the lawyers, insurers, bankers, and marketing professionals who have made a speciality of shipping. Britain continues to dominate the maritime business services sector as a world leader.

In 2009, the UK shipping industry accounted for 210,000 jobs, and contributed £12.9billion to British GDP. Since then, defying the recession, the industry has continued to grow rapidly.

Much of the industry is concentrated in the South East and, in particular, the City of London.

So Leigh residents Phil and Steve were in the right place when they set up their business in what Steve calls “a cramped little office above the Sarah Moore pub in Leigh.” From here, they have spread across not just south-east England, but much of the world.

Spinnaker now operates in 30 countries. The office got a lot more cramped as Spinnaker grew in size, but its 35 staff have now moved to a spacious new centre in Cobat House, off London Road – “ready to meet the challenge of the London Gateway development”, Rachel says.

Southend East MP David Amess will cut the ribbon at the official opening on July 12.

To help meet the demand for shipping jobs, Spinnaker has moved from recruitment into active training. Its graduate programme aims to convert university leavers from a range of academic disciplines into shipping professionals. Rachel says: “It’s vital we engage young people with the shipping industry.”

For much of the time, the work of a shipping professional involves phones and computer screens. Within sight of Cobal House, however, is a reminder of what it is really all about.

Beyond the Leigh rooftops lies the Thames Estuary, where the great container ships cruise up and down, heading from and to the seven seas and the four corners of the world.

Rachel says: “The view helps us to keep in touch with real ships.”