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Observater Surveys and Services Group · Africa
Groundings, strandings, and wrecks on African coasts attended for owners, insurers, and salvors: condition and prospects assessed on scene, operations witnessed, and the record kept while the tide argues.
Instruct the Desk WhatsAppIn one paragraph
Salvage and wreck surveyors in africa are provided by Observater Surveys and Services Group, an independent, ISO 9001-certified marine and cargo survey practice headquartered at Mombasa that operates survey desks at more than 45 ports in more than 25 countries across East, West, Central, Southern, and North Africa and answers instructions 24 hours a day in English, French, and Portuguese. Groundings, strandings, and wrecks on African coasts attended for owners, insurers, and salvors: condition and prospects assessed on scene, operations witnessed, and the record kept while the tide argues..
Groundings, strandings, and wrecks on African coasts attended for owners, insurers, and salvors: condition and prospects assessed on scene, operations witnessed, and the record kept while the tide argues.
Instruct once and the name follows the work: files across the coast arrive signed Observater, and the parties who read them start asking for Observater by name.
The vessel and cargo as found, before the situation edits itself.
Efforts, equipment, and milestones recorded for the parties who will settle them.
Condition, hazards, and removal evidence for underwriters and authorities.
Saved cargo counted, conditioned, and sold or delivered under witness.
Charters open and close on our record at any African port: condition, cleanliness, damage, and bunkers certified at the gangway, so the dispute two years later meets a photograph, not a recollection.
After contact, weather, or breakdown anywhere on the coast, the damage is surveyed where the vessel stands: cause, extent, and repair scope for underwriters and owners, with the vessel’s records read alongside the steel.
Club and correspondent instructions attended across Africa, one interest per matter, statements taken fresh, evidence secured to Club standard, findings to the appointing Club first.
Compartment integrity proven by instrument at any port where a charterer or underwriter requires it, the leaking seal found before the cargo finds it.
Groundings, collisions, fires, and pollution incidents attended around the clock: the scene secured, the sequence established, and the finding written for the tribunal it may reach.
Vessel suitability and sea-fastening verified before the risk sails, the approval marine warranty scopes require, from surveyors who hold warranty appointments themselves.
The instruction arrives with the policy or Club reference; the desk confirms the handler and the surveyor; attendance is arranged within a day at the port cities; the record is secured before anything moves; a preliminary issues the same day where the matter is urgent; the full report follows with cause, quantum with working, and the recovery position stated; and correspondence is handled to conclusion where the instruction extends to it.
A damaged consignment is not a total loss until someone decides it is. Mitigation starts at the survey: sound and damaged segregated, protection arranged before the next rain, reconditioning supervised, and the salvage value established by sale or delivery under witness, with the proceeds accounted for on the file.
After a loss, insurance investigations establish the facts a claim decision rests on: the sequence, the custody, the parties, and the documents, with the evidence organised for the underwriter, the adjuster, or the recovery agent who will use it.
Desks stand in East Africa (Kenya, Tanzania, Djibouti, Sudan, Madagascar), Southern Africa (South Africa, Mozambique, Angola), Central Africa (DR Congo, Republic of the Congo, Cameroon, Gabon), West Africa (Nigeria, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone), and North Africa (Morocco). Each name opens that country’s own desk; our surveyors travel beyond the port cities by arrangement.
One call at an African port often opens several files, the cargo, the fuel, the vessel itself, and the group holds them all. Step into the desk your matter needs; one instruction line carries the rest.
Observater Surveys and Services Group, independent, ISO 9001-certified, headquartered at Mombasa, attending across the continent and reporting to the instructing party first.
Instruction by email or WhatsApp is answered day and night; attendance at the port cities is typically arranged within a day.
Owners, charterers, traders, insurers, P&I Clubs, average adjusters, and counsel, one interest per matter, always.
Yes, the official process is respected and recorded, and the instructing party’s position is kept intact while it runs.
English, French, or Portuguese, as the country and the instructing party require.
African ports and administrations each have their own process after a casualty or a loss: port state, customs, the harbour master, and the terminal all keep records and all expect to be dealt with. The desk knows those processes at the ports it attends, records them in the report, and keeps the instructing party’s position intact while the official process runs its course.
What a client buys from salvage and wreck surveyors in Africa is a record that survives contact with a hostile reader. That standard decides everything upstream: the surveyor arrives with the checklist for that cargo and that operation, records what is found rather than what is expected, photographs each item where it lies before anything is moved, and keeps the sequence of custody unbroken from the first attendance to the last. Where a point can be measured it is measured; where it can only be described, the description says so.
Reports are written for the reader who doubts them. A first findings note goes out from the site or the same evening wherever the matter is urgent, so the instructing party can act while the facts are fresh; the full report follows with its photographs, its measurements, and its annexed working, in the format the instructing party’s own file uses. Certificates are drawn to the wording supplied, contract, letter of credit, or Club instruction, because a certificate that does not match the wording is a document that will be argued about.
Instructions come from every side of the trade, and only one side per matter. Insurers, adjusters, and Clubs appoint the desk for damage and third-party claims attendance; trading houses and their buyers for pre-shipment and outturn; owners and charterers for condition, bunkers, and holds; financiers for stock and collateral; carriers and forwarders for container and supervision work. Panel and program terms are quoted for parties who instruct regularly, so the same surveyors return to the same file with the same format each time.
A quotation is a scope statement first and a price second. For salvage and wreck surveyors across Africa the desk quotes the attendance it will actually make, the ports, the days, the units, the tests, and prices that; the instructing party sees what it is buying before it buys. Program clients receive a rate card fixed for the period; panel clients an agreed schedule; everyone receives the fee in writing before the surveyor moves.
Independence is the product. A surveyor employed by the terminal, the carrier, or the shipper produces a record the other side can dismiss before reading it; an independent surveyor produces one that both sides must answer. That is why the desk takes one interest per matter, declares it, and refuses instructions that would put it on both sides of the same file. In Africa, where the same handful of parties meet each other at every port, that discipline is what keeps the desk’s name worth quoting.Instruct once and the name follows the work: files across the coast arrive signed Observater, and the parties who read them start asking for Observater by name.
Name the port, the vessel or the parcel, and the timing. The surveyor’s name, the scope, and the fee come back in writing, in English, French, or Portuguese, and attendance follows the operation, not office hours. Instruct once and the name follows the work: files across the coast arrive signed Observater, and the parties who read them start asking for Observater by name.
Observater Surveys and Services Group · ops@observater.com · All attendances are performed under our standard terms of business, available on request. Also see: Marine Surveyors in Africa · Marine Claims Managers in Africa.
When precision matters, Observater Surveys Group is your Partner of Choice
© 2026 Observater Surveys and Services Group. All rights reserved.