Hapag-Lloyd Commits to EGCS Retrofitting

German container shipping major Hapag-Lloyd announced its plan to retrofit ten vessels with Exhaust Gas Cleaning Systems (EGCS). Ten Hamburg Class vessels (13,000 TEU) to be retrofitted in 2019 and 2020, it said.

Hapag-Lloyd has ordered ten Hybrid Ready Exhaust Gas Cleaning Systems (EGCS), which will be gradually installed to ten of Hapag-Lloyd’s Hamburg class vessels (13,000 TEU) during 2019 and 2020. This will allow the company to comply with the upcoming IMO2020 low sulphur regulation.

The retrofits will start in March 2019 when the first EGCS will be installed to the vessel “Hamburg Express” at Qingdao Beihai shipyard in China. Hapag-Lloyd is estimating all of the installations to be finished before the end of 2020.

The decision was made as a part of Hapag-Lloyd’s response to the International Maritime Organization’s (IMO) upcoming low sulphur regulation. The so called IMO2020 regulation limits the sulphur emissions caused by marine fuels to 0.5 percent as of 1 January 2020.

“Using compliant low sulphur fuels is the key solution for Hapag-Lloyd. However, we want to make sure we test and make use of all relevant solutions, which is why we decided to also retrofit our Hamburg Class vessels with EGCS,” said Anthony Firmin, COO of Hapag-Lloyd.

Hapag-Lloyd also has 17 new vessels in its fleet, which can be converted to use Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG). The company will retrofit one vessel of 15.000 TEU during 2019 – and will then test whether LNG is a suitable alternative to low sulphur fuel.