Maersk looks to green finance for newbuild projects

The company has successfully placed its inaugural 10-year, €500 million green bond to fund the build of its first feeder vessel and a ground-breaking series of eight large ocean-going container vessels which will be capable of operating on carbon neutral methanol by 2023 and 2024, respectively.

“Issuing Green Financing Instruments is a further step to integrating sustainability into our financing operations as it is an effective tool for channelling investments to projects with positive environmental impact and thereby contributing to the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement,” said Patrick Jany, chief finance officer at A.P. Moller – Maersk.

“With this green bond, we aim at diversifying our investor base by reaching out to new investors and increasing the transparency of our ESG ambitions and performance even further towards our stakeholders,” he added.

The framework has been assessed by Cicero Green against the ICMA Green Bond Principles 2021 and the Green Loan Principles 2021, receiving a Medium Green shading and a governance score of Excellent.

Maersk intends to use the new framework to help meet its goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2050. The inaugural transaction was met with strong demand with a final order book at €3.7bn. The transaction priced at a coupon of 0.75%, the lowest coupon ever for Maersk.