Wärtsilä admits fuel consumption test fixing

The deviations occurred in factory acceptance tests and were discovered in an annual internal audit. They are in the order of 1% of the engines’ fuel consumption on average.

The affected engines were dispatched from the company’s delivery centre in Trieste and represent around 2% of deliveries from the facility last year.

Wärtsilä said that it was in the process of sending letters to affected customers, and would visit each of them in due course. However it noted that it believed the issue would have only a marginal financial impact on the company, and that the discrepancy in engine fuel consumption did not exceed a threshold – determined on a customer-by-customer basis – that would trigger penalties.

The company also stressed that the discrepancies had no impact on regulatory or classification requirements, and that all vessels supplied with the affected engines had passed sea trials. It noted that the test anomalies were the work of a handful of employees working in contradiction to company policies and procedures.

“Wärtsilä requires all its employees to act in accordance with internal guidelines as well as laws and regulations. We deeply apologise for any loss in trust caused by this violation to our policies and corporate values, and we will immediately start reaching out to our customers,” said president and CEO Jaakko Eskola.

The issue affects only marine four-stroke engines, not land-based engines or two-stroke marine engines, which are factory tested by licensee builders in Asia.