Asia/Pacific News
Tata Steel Delivers India's First LNG-Fuelled Dry Bulk Import Shipment
Tata Steel has made India's first dry bulk import shipment using LNG as a marine fuel.
The firm took delivery of a 165,700 mt coal shipment at Dharma on Wednesday from the bulker MV Ubuntu Unity, partly running on LNG for the voyage, it said in a statement on its website on Friday. The shipment came from Gladstone, Australia.
The company plans to import about 1 million mt of coking coal from Australia on LNG-fuelled ships next year.
"In 2021, Tata Steel became the first in the Indian Steel Industry to deploy a ship powered by biofuel," Peeyush Gupta, vice president for group strategic procurement and supply chain at Tata Steel, said in the statement.
"We continued the decarbonation drive with 7 biofuel shipments in FY23.
"In continuation to our sustainability drive, in FY24, we are the first to deploy an LNG powered vessel for transportation of raw materials to India.
"This is a landmark initiative to lower the Company's Scope 3 carbon footprint.
"With innovation and participation of all the partners, in FY24, we endeavour to perform 10% of our total number of shipments for imports through alternate fuel powered vessels."
LNG for now remains the dominant alternative bunker fuel, with several hundred ships now using it as fuel. The main challenge facing the LNG bunker industry now is the scaling-up of greener bio- and synthetic LNG production to meet the needs of shipowners seeking to cut the GHG emissions of their gas-powered tonnage.
