Hempel Antifouling Coating Delivers Fuel Savings for Lemissoler

Hempel says its Dynamic antifouling product has provided Lemissoler Navigation with "significant" fuel savings on four newbuild bulk carriers.

Global marine coatings supplier Hempel A/S (Hempel) Tuesday announced in an emailed press release that Lemissoler Navigation (Lemissoler) has obtained "significant fuel savings" through its affiliated and managed company Frontmarine Co. Ltd (Frontmarine) after four of its eight newbuild 58,500 DWT supramax bulk carriers received Hempel's Dynamic antifouling coating.

Under a environmental efficiency initiative, Lemissoler is said to have adopted a unique hull design for the newbuilds, and has fitted the vessels with fuel-efficient propellers, as well as applied Hempel's Dynamic antifouling to the ships' undersides.

"Dynamic is a low friction, hydrolysing silyl acrylate, which gives our customers an outstanding antifouling service and delivers average fuel savings of up to 4 percent," said Andreas Glud, Group Product Manager at Hempel.

"Based on the fuel savings demonstrated in these trials, our Dynamic antifouling is a contributing factor to an overall fuel saving of 7 percent for the new Frontmarine vessels."

While the newbuilds' design specification indicates a fuel consumption rate of 24.7 tonnes per day at 14.2 knots in ballast condition, the vessels' efficiency measures are said to have enabled a rate of just 23 tonnes per day in sea trials.

With the successful efficiency performance of the first four newbuilds to receive the Hempel product, Lemissoler says it is now planning to coat the remaining four vessels with the product as well.

In December, Hempel announced the launch of a new fuel-saving fouling release coating, known as Hempasil X3+, said to trick organisms into believing the hull is liquid, and not a solid structure.