Ahead of their expected deliveries in the second quarter of 2020, Hyundai Merchant Marine (HMM) has said that it would fit its 12 largest containerships of 23,000 TEU with scrubbers.
The installation of the exhaust gas cleaning system will allow the giant boxships to continue burning the 3.5% high sulphur bunker fuel beyond 1 January 2020, when the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) 2020 regulation will be enforced to limit fuel sulphur content to 0.5%.
Among the twelve 23,000 teu containerships, seven will be built at Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering (DSME) and five at Samsung Heavy Industries (SHI).
On Wednesday, Finland-based Valmet announced that it won the deal to supply seven scrubbers to the newbuilds at DSME. The scrubber system deliveries will start this year, and the value of the order was not disclosed.
Valmet said its scrubber system deliveries will include tailor-made hybrid systems for main engine and generator engines. The exhaust gas is washed with seawater in open-loop mode and recirculated water and alkali in closed loop mode.
In addition to installing scrubbers on the twelve 23,000 TEU boxships, HMM will install scrubbers on another eight 15,000 TEU containerships to be built at Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI).
The Korean shipowner also plans to retrofit scrubbers on 19 containerships currently in operation by the first half of 2020. Furthermore, HHM’s five VLCCs starting delivery from January 2019 are also retrofitted with scrubbers.
This brings the number of scrubber fitted HMM ships to 44, out of more than 100 ships in its fleet.
Last week, HMM signed a memorandum of understanding to establish a fund for its scrubber installation. The KRW153.3 billion ($134.9 million) fund will consist of HMM’s investment of KRW46 billion and the remaining KRW107.3 billion will come from Korea Ocean Business Corp’s guaranteed loan of KRW62.3 billion and KRW45 billion invested by Hyundai Corporation, SKTI, Hyundai Global Service, DSEC and Panasia.
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