Boxships totaling 5.3M TEUs in capacity install scrubbers

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Containerships with a collective cargo-carrying capacity of 5.3 million TEUs are now fitted with an exhaust gas cleaning system (scrubber), making the sector the most scrubber-fitted among the main cargo-carrying ship types, according to a report from the Baltic International and Maritime Council (BIMCO).

A scrubber is fitted to remove sulfur oxides (SOx) from the exhaust gases generated by the combustion processes in marine engines so as to comply with the International Maritime Organization’s global sulfur regulation (IMO 2020) which came into force on January 1, 2020, said the BIMCO report released August 13.

“In order to cut the sulphur oxides emission, shipowners who can afford to buy a scrubber have done so to a substantial extent, with investments predominantly directed towards high consumption ship types,” said Peter Sand, BIMCO’s chief shipping analyst.

“The debate on scrubber economics is all but gone now, as 2020 is in full swing and focus has turned towards COVID-19, and how that impacts the business. What remains are the economic realities and technical obstacles the industry is dealing with daily,” Sand said.

“Cost savings are essential to all, but despite a considerable share of the fleets now being scrubber-fitted, the largest part of the fleet continues to operate without,” Sand said.

READ: Industry survey identifies challenges with switch to low sulfur fuel

While the scrubber-fitted fleet of main cargo-carrying ship types now counts 2,600 ships, most of the fleet—20,000 ships—are without a scrubber.

Since bigger ships consume more fuel, the uptake of SOx scrubbers is more popular for ultra large containerships.

About 56.3% of the current container shipping orderbook (1.2 million TEUs) will have a scrubber onboard when they are delivered, but more importantly, the pending retrofits of 1.5 million TEUs will push up the total scrubber count.

Adding ongoing and pending scrubber retrofits to those that will be on board newbuilds brings the total scrubber capacity count to 8 million TEUs for containerships (31.6%) once all is installed.

Retrofitting a containership is the most time-consuming, according to the report. In 2020 alone, the number of days spent on a containership retrofit has averaged 68 days ranging between 56 days in February and 79 days in July. This compares to an average number of days spent on a bulk carrier in 2020 of 46 days and 41 days on a crude oil tanker

Meanwhile, choosing to comply with the new sulfur regulation without a scrubber installed requires a ship to run on a low-sulfur fuel oil. Since January 1, 2020, the global refinery industry has supplied the shipping sector with mainly low-sulfur fuel oil, with the more expensive distillate, marine gas oil, a distant second.

Photo by Picture from the Port de Bordeaux Website