It’s back to the


seventies, warns DFDS


The north European short-sea sector is facing a fuel price hike 50% bigger than the oil price ‘shock’ of the 1970s, warns DFDS Seaways. Poul Woodall, director of sustainability and environment at the Danish-owned ferry operator, told a recent customer presentation that his own analysis of the likely effect of new Marpol limits on the sulphur content of marine fuel would be to substantially increase the cost of this major expense for all operators in the North European Emission Control Area, which covers the English Channel, North Sea and Baltic. The new 0.1% limit on ships’


sulphur output from 1 January 2015 will leave operators with stark choices – switch from standard marine oil to more expensive diesel, fit exhaust scrubbers to clean up the emissions


from


marine oil, switch to liquefied natural gas (LNG) – or move ships out of the region. Increases in freight rates are


inevitable, Woodall says. “If you don’t put your prices up, you’re in trouble,” he told FBJ.


DFDS probably has more experience with fitting and operation of exhaust scrubbers than any other line he continued, but it still faces major uncertainties over the likely cost of the new limits. It was among the first operators to fit a scrubber to a vessel, the Ficaria Seaways in 2009, and has built up valuable experience with the technology since then. It now has four ships with scrubbers, with a further eight due to be fitted in 2014 and eight more in 2015, bringing the total fitted fleet to 20 vessels. The technology does work


reasonably well, says Woodall; there are some additional costs, such as the chemicals needed to get rid of the sulphur emissions and additional power off-take to drive pumps and other equipment but they are containable. However, the high cost of


retrofitting scrubbers makes it uneconomic for older tonnage and the remainder of the fleet – around 30 ships in all - will probably have to burn diesel, which at current prices is about $275-300 a tonne more expensive than marine oil.


Bigger ships for Transfennica


Transfennica has introduced larger ships on its Zeebrugge – Bilbao ro ro and container route. The MV Forerunner and MV Forecaster will operate two sailings per week in each direction, offering a capacity of 3,000 lane metres compared with the previous vessels’ 2,700 lane metres. There are also 12 cabins for accompanying drivers and the vessels are fully fitted for project cargo; they can take roll trailers of up to 60 ft/120 tonnes. Transfennica


currently


operates two sailings a week in each direction departing


The ultimate answer may be


LNG, but this isn’t a short-term solution. Many of the world’s current 80 or so LNG vessels are actually based in Norway, one of DFDS’s major markets, operating routes such as Stockholm- Helsinki or between Denmark and Norway. But there are challenges in providing sufficient fuelling stations – currently, LNG only works with self-contained ferry services that rarely if ever change their port calls.


either port on Tuesdays and Fridays. Excellent connections are available in Zeebrugge to/ from the UK and Scandinavia, plus Finland, Russia, Estonia and Poland. Transfennica has signed an operational agreement with P&O European Ferries, which uses the same terminal in Zeebrugge, offering connections twice-daily to and from Tilbury and also to and from Hull and Teesport. Transfennica director Eric


de Wit, said: “UK hauliers, especially in the north of England, can save a lot of road miles.”


CSAV talks


German container shipping line Hapag Lloyd says it has started talks with its Chilean counterpart, CSAV. The discussions concern a “possible business combination” or other form of association but no binding agreement has been signed yet. Hapag Lloyd had previously been in discussions with fellow German line Hamburg Sud, but the talks were called off without result.


Irish stalwart honoured


Forwarding industry doyen Gerry Tyrrell has received an Irish Air Cargo Institute lifetime achievement award. Sponsored by Prime Express, the presentation was made at the Institute’s Christmas Lunch in Dublin on 12 December by FBJ editor Chris Lewis. Gerry Tyrrell was operations director at Irish Express Cargo and, together with fellow-founder, the late Finn O’S ullivan, spearheaded the company to become a global force in freight forwarding, which was one of the first to offer bespoke turnkey solutions to the nascent high- tech industry in Ireland. A measure of the success of Irish Express’ – which had by then expanded far beyond its native shores - was eventually bought by major manufacturer Flextronics to become an integral part of its operations.


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