NYK orders speed reduction

Another shipping line is looking at reducing sailing speeds as a way of cutting bunker consumption. Koji Miyahara, President of the Japanese NYK Group, has called for a ?rationalization? of Group policy. “A 10% slowdown of voyage speed will produce a more than a 25% saving of fuel oil,” he said. Miyahara added that any reduction in fuel consumption would also bring an environmental benefit by reducing CO2 emissions.

NYK Group operates a fleet of over 700 vessels including some 140 container ships and says it purchased some 6 million tonnes of bunker fuel in 2007.

“I would like to reemphasize that the systems so far maintained no longer suffice to enable container ships consuming massive quantities of fuel to continue operating at a profit,” Miyahara said in an apparent reference to the system of bunker surcharges, the traditional method for carriers to recover fuel price increases. “If a single container ship daily consumes 200 mt of fuel costing $500 per mt, its fuel cost will reach as high as $100,000 in just a day.” That meant there had to be a “drastic change” in the traditional business model of marine transport, he said.

Miyahara also urged the NYK Group “to squarely face up” to what he called “the environmental problem”. “All members of the NYK Group are called upon to deal with the environmental problem with a renewed awareness that it is also the biggest economic issue for group management,” he said.

Last month, a senior official of the French container transport and shipping company CMA CGM predicted that “most shipping lines” would start steaming at “economic speed to minimise bunker fuel consumption.” Maersk Line, the world’s leading container shipping company, said in December that it would be introducing slower sailing speeds on some routes.