Finnish group Wartsila is seeing more talks with owners about scrubber retrofits, but is facing the headache of actually getting ships into yards in booming markets.
The company said second-quarter installation activity was muted, which was largely down to record rates for container vessels.
Tamara de Gruyter, president of marine systems at Wartsila, told TradeWinds that newbuilding scrubber business was still healthy, due to surging numbers of new contracts for shipbuilders.
She said some of these vessels are dual-fuel, but "there's still a significant portion with scrubbers".
De Gruyter added that Wartsila won a few deals to fit the exhaust cleaning systems to new vessels in the period, and hopes to clinch more contracts in the coming quarters.
However, she said that will not help the company's 2021 revenue as delivery times are further out than that.
Suffering a little
She admitted: "We are still suffering a bit with the retrofits. The container market is doing so well, our customers are all making lots of money, but that also gives a problem, because they don't want to bring the vessels in for retrofit."
"We are ready with the scrubber, the dock is ready and then the customer says, 'oh maybe next month'."
De Gruyter sees owners "having to do something" about retrofits in the second half of the year.
"They don't want to come in, they're making too good money, which I can understand," she said.
Bulkers are also making plenty of money, but it is the container sector that makes up the bulk of Wartsila's scrubber orderbook.
De Gruyter puts the spread between low-sulphur and high-sulphur fuels at $120 per tonne, which she thinks is good enough to entice owners to fit the exhaust cleaners and take advantage of the cheaper bunkers.
But she added: "We still haven't seen big ordering, there's an order here and there."
Positive sign
"What we can see is a big increase in enquiries. That's maybe a bit of a positive sign that it starts to be on shipowners' minds again, after last year when there was almost no enquiry. People weren't even thinking about it."
De Gruyter also argues that the earnings premium for scrubber-fitted ships is a key part of the business case for owners.
"Scrubber-fitted bulkers and tankers get way better rates," she said.
Aside from the exhaust cleaning market, De Gruyter said there was a record order intake for gas solutions in the second quarter.
This was due to a booming market for new VLGCs, many of which are now dual-fuel.
"We've really been harvesting from that a lot of cargo-handling systems," she said.
