SMM live: MAN panel discussion on the retrofit market

“Our strategy is to become a carbon neutral shipping company by 2045,” declared Lehmköster, adding another goal is to have a slow steaming fleet while also “looking into” alternative fuels.

Moderating the discussion was Nils Søholt, communications manager at MAN, who asked Siebert how many vessels on a global scale are suitable for retrofits. Siebert answered that there’s roughly 10,000 ships that are candidates for retrofits, with 1,500 of them being suitable for having their engines converted to an alternative fuel to aid decarbonisation.

The talk heated up when the question of challenges to retrofitting was raised. Siebert said that there were two main issues, fuel availability and with that price, coupled with the technical complexity of converting an engine.

Speaking about the two-stroke market, Rasmussen agreed with his colleague that fuel availability was an issue but also said: “There also has to be some kind of level playing field in terms of regulations. Otherwise, it [future fuels] will not really take off.” He added that “fossil fuels are too cheap” to make more costly alternatives a viable option in the current market although MAN has conducted 23 such retrofits with a further 38 in the pipeline.

Hapag Lloyd’s Lehmköster pointed to the practical issues of retrofits stating that challenges are “manifold”. She spoke about having to “make sure that we don’t take out the vessel at an inconvenient time” moreover a retrofit should coincide with a scheduled dry-docking period.

Meyer’s Jongebloed was optimistic about the future of retrofitting vessels to run on alternative fuels reminiscing about the first LNG-fuelled cruise ships in 2018. He highlighted the importance of partnerships, where “everyone knows what their specialty is and they can them bring together in a holistic view”. With Hapag-Lloyd and Meyer Re on this panel, it seems that MAN ES certainly has the right sort of partners to make cleaner running retrofits a mainstay of the global shipping industry.