Wages, victuals, and stores

Wages, victuals, and stores are the core crew-related operating costs an owner carries on a manned ship: seafarers’ wages and social costs, food and provisions (victualling), and the consumable stores and spares the ship needs to run. Together with insurance, maintenance, lubricants, and management fee they make up the daily running cost (OPEX), which on a time charter sits to the owner’s account while the charterer pays voyage costs. Manning is the largest OPEX block on most ships, so crew-cost differences across flags and nationalities drive registry and management choices. These items appear as owner’s-account costs in any cost-allocation analysis.