EnvironmentEurope

BHP chastises owners over carbon footprint ignorance

Dry bulk owners have received a public rebuke from one of the world’s largest miners for their ignorance of their own carbon footprint.

Speaking during yesterday’s Asia session at the Nor-Shipping trade fair just outside Oslo, Rashpal Bhatti, a vice president at BHP, relayed how at another forum he had asked how many of the owners present could say what their carbon footprint was per ton, with just 15% able to reply, an indication, Bhatti said, that shipping needs to get to grips better with key indicators. Bhatti said it was shippers such as BHP who had a responsibility to take and lead the shipping industry forward.

Bhatti also discussed the online auction platform his company set up in Singapore in 2017 for owners to bid for iron ore shipments. The platform initially focused on the capesize trades, but has since expanded to include panamaxes and is now being opened up for copper trades and smaller tonnages.

Bhatti said that BHP’s target was to get 20% of its products delivered via its auction platform.

Birgitte Vartdal, CEO of listed Norwegian bulker owner Golden Ocean, said requirements from the likes of BHP will be the easiest way to drive dry bulk shipping forward. Individual owners are too small to drive change, Vartdal reckoned.

Speaking on the same panel, Frank Coles, CEO of Hong Kong’s Wallem Ship Management, called on shipowners to change their business models in line with how global business is developing.

“What we are facing here is the world’s largest change management exercise, and we are doing it in the second oldest industry in the world,” Coles told delegates.

Nor-Shipping closes tomorrow.

Hans Thaulow

Hans Henrik Thaulow is an Oslo-based journalist who has been covering the shipping industry for the last 15 years. As well as some work for the Informa Group, Hans was the China correspondent for TradeWinds. He also contributes to Maritime CEO magazine. Hans’ shipping background extends to working as a shipbroker trainee with Simpson, Spence & Young in Hong Kong.

Comments

  1. I agree with the thesis here. As I’ve asserted through online or face to face convos’, public companies which charter ships can be called out for chartering “inferior” (however you define it) vessels, and this reality has started to impact vessel chartering choices. Though in a hyper good marketplace, circa 2007 style $200k/day for Capes, I wonder how that would play out.

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