Hapag Lloyd to retrofit ten scrubbers to containerships

The company will install hybrid ready exhaust gas cleaning systems on ten 13,000 TEU vessels in 2019 and 2020. The first retrofit will be undertaken in March 2019, when the Hamburg Express will be modified at the Qingdao Beihai shipyard in Tangshan province, China.

“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.

It will also convert one of the 17 15,000 TEU ships it previously identified as potential candidates for LNG retrofits. The initial conversion will be one of the ‘LNG ready’ ships the company gained when it acquired the United Arab Shipping Company (UASC) in 2016.

Hapag-Lloyd estimated the cost of scrubber installations at US$7-10 million per ship, while converting a large ‘LNG-ready’ ship to LNG would cost US$20-25 million.