Social responsibility

We support community engagement both within and outside of our industry.

Erik Thun administrates the Alice & Helge Källsson Foundation for Education and Research, the purpose of which is to provide grants and scholarships to support education within shipping and to support research aimed at environmentally safer coastal transport. For more than 40 years now, the Foundation has given grants to students taking master mariner or maritime engineering degrees, in connection with the writing of dissertations and master’s theses in different areas such as marine environments, reduction of emissions, navigation in narrow waters etc. Through the Foundation, we also support local initiatives such as Strandstädarna och Minas Vänner.

The majority among the crews on board the Thun ships are from the Philippines. The Erik Thun Group has chosen a crewing company, Conautic, which has a sound CSR-plan, including the seafarer’s families as part of its corporate family.

In 2024, Erik Thun Group decided to be a partner of the initiative ”Blåhjärtat”. It is the local sports club, Villa Lidköping’s, community commitment aiming to create a better and stronger Lidköping with several initiatives in line with the UN Goals that Erik Thun Group has chosen as objectives for our sustainability work:

”We are pleased to be able to enter this collaboration. At Erik Thun, we have a great commitment to society both globally and locally. We are very proud to be able to contribute to the local community in Lidköping as the first gold partner of Blåhjärtat. We see that it matches our sustainability goals in the social issues that we are passionate about and therefore it was natural for us to become part of the team in this matter close to our hearts”, said the Managing Director Johan Källsson at the time of the announcement.

To mark the 85-year anniversary of Erik Thun Group, being in the shipping industry since 1938, we made a special contribution to UNHCR at the end of 2023 in order to support their continuous work bringing healthcare to
refugees.

The Erik Thun Group also sponsors various projects annually such as Mercy Ships (an international hospital ship, offering health care in developing countries), Ung Företagsamhet (a non-profit organization working to promote entrepreneurship among Swedish students) and ÖRN-72 (preservation of eagles in Scandinavia).