Asia/Pacific News
CMA CGM Launches Giant Global Biofuel Trial on 32 Boxships
French container line CMA CGM has launched a giant new trial of biofuel bunkers on board 32 of its vessels.
The company launched the trial in Singapore on Wednesday with the support of the Maritime and Port Authority, it said in an emailed statement on Thursday. The firm bunkered its 10,640 TEU ship the APL Paris with biofuels in Singapore.
Over the next six months the company will now test biofuels in up to 32 of its boxships ranging between 2,200 TEU and 10,640 TEU in capacity. The majority of biofuel trials by other shipping firms so far have been on a much smaller scale, typically involving one or two ships at a time.
Some of the biofuel bunkered in Singapore will be a B24 blend containing 24% cooking oil methyl ester, the company said.
The idea behind the large scale of the CMA CGM testing is to measure CO2 and NOx emissions in a range of vessels over time to build up a trend analysis, which the company will then share with flag administrations including Singapore's MPA.
"This global biofuel trial and bunkering in Singapore advances CMA CGM's energy transition, paving the way for biofuel to scale up as one of the solutions to decarbonise shipping," Stéphane Courquin, CEO of CMA CGM Asia Pacific, said in the statement.
"With the use of biofuels being assessed over multiple key trade lanes and onboard ships of various sizes, we shall gather a comprehensive data set to verify the biofuel's performance as a marine fuel and gain insights into facilitating a wider adoption of biofuel as a clean fuel."
The biofuel trial comes on top of CMA CGM's significant investments to date in LNG bunkering. The firm expects to have 44 ships running on LNG by the end of 2024.
Biofuel, LNG and bio-LNG will take up 10% of the firm's energy mix by 2023. The company spent a total of $3.072 billion on its bunkers in 2020, representing very roughly about 8.3 million mt of demand.
