SK authorities cancel Panasia GloEn TA

The cancellation is understood to cover all 48 of the company’s ultraviolet systems. The decision to revoke the licence came after discrepancies emerged between the products’ type approval and the products delivered to customers, according to the ministry.

According to local media reports, Panasia has been ordered to replace the effected equipment, but the company has appealed against the ruling, and obtained a suspension of the order pending a final ruling on 13 March. “We are also considering criminal charges if Panasia fails to comply with the order,” the ministry told South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency.

Local sources inform The Motorship that the MOF case is not simply one of the installation of inadmissible components under the type approval, but of discrepancies in the applications for type approval between the Korean Register and MOF.

“MOF checked and discovered that the number of lamps per thread differed between the [MOF and KR] type approvals,” a local source told The Motorship.

It is understood that this may have led to the specific power consumption of the GloEn BWTS system being incorrectly assessed.

Panasia has installed GloEn systems on 1,145 vessels, with the majority of its sales understood to come from foreign-owned vessels with lower ballasting flow requirements, such as container carriers, passenger vessels, RoRo and RoPax vessels.