Greater China

Bulker and tanker firms slow to adopt green technologies

 

Singapore: In the second of a series of reports spread out over this week from yesterday’s Eco-Dollars Business Breakfast sponsored by Ideocean and Lloyd’s Register bulkers and tankers were pinpointed as being slow to take up the green drive. 

Noël Jelsma from Eniram, a firm specialising in providing tools for ships to reduce fuel bills, commented: “The sectors that have seen the most rapid uptake of eco technology are those ones in the public eye, the cruise sector and the container industry and those that are lagging behind are the tanker and bulker sectors as they are a bit more isolated from that scrutiny but also there is a bigger disconnect between investment and financial benefit.”

Finland’s Eniram’s biggest client base is the cruise sector

“The challenge for us now,” said Jelsma, “is how to put more pressure into the tanker and bulker sectors to increase the uptake there. It will be driven by economics. We use the term green and we use the term eco all the time but I think in this sense eco is for economics and not ecology. It is the money that drives all this.”

Speaking at the event held at the Fullerton Hotel in Singapore Iain Wilson, Regional Marine Manager for Lloyd's Register Asia, said that slow take up was down to the regulatory environment, with owners not investing until they had to. “People will not invest in something that does not pay back and the majority of shipowners will hang back until they have to thanks to the regulatory environment,” he said. 

Shaj Thayil, VP, Technical Services & Ship Management at NOL, which runs containerline APL, noted, “We move goods which are extremely demanding, customers have their own requirements. There is a lot of interaction to ensure that we optimise on our operations and our consumption so it is bit different to my colleagues who operate different ships.”

Bulker and tanker owners’ holding off green investments may well change in the wake of news a couple of weeks ago that three of the world’s largest charterers – Cargill, Unipec UK and Huntsman – will only take on ships that match their green requirements.  

Eco-Dollars Business Breakfast was organized by Asia Shipping Media, the parent company of this website. [24/10/12]

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