Neptune Lines has joined the growing group of well-known Greek shipowners installing scrubbers on its vessels to comply with the IMO’s 2020 sulphur cap.
The car-carrier owner plans to have 10 ships fitted with hybrid-ready scrubbers by early next year, the Melina Travlos-controlled company said on its website.
Installation work has already been completed on the first two vessels — the 3,800-ceu Neptune Galene and Neptune Thalassa (both built 2014). These are the youngest units in Neptune Lines' fleet of 16 owned or chartered pure car and truck carriers.
Danish company ME Production provided the hybrid-ready scrubbers — designed to have the flexibility to operate in both open and closed-loop mode — and they were installed on the vessels at the Odessos shiprepair yard in Varna, Bulgaria.
Most large Greek shipowners, including John Angelicoussis, Petros Pappas and George Economou, have announced wide-ranging scrubber installation programmes.
However, other Greek players, such as George Procopiou and Union of Greek Shipowners (UGS) president Theodore Veniamis, have come out against them.
The use of open-loop scrubbers has been particularly controversial. Critics argue they are merely shifting pollution from the air to the sea. Several ports worldwide have banned open-loop scrubbers and the IMO is investigating their environmental impact.
Proponents of scrubbers offer a counter argument that the additional sulphur poured into the sea is negligible, compared to existing, natural sulphur concentrations in the oceans. The ban on open-loop scrubbers in some ports does not seem to have impacted the economic calculation underpinning their installation yet.
