EMEA News
Sweden's Alfa Laval Scoops up Third of Scrubber Market
Swedish marine engineering company Alfa Laval says it has had over 100 scrubber orders for its PureSOx exhaust abatement technology.
109 vessels either have the equipment installed or have it on order with 75 of its scrubbers in operation, the company said in a statement.
Retrofits, where a scrubber unit is installed onto an existing ship, account for over 60 of the sales while 41 units have gone into newbuilds, Alfa Laval said.
Marine analyst IHS Markit puts the total figure for scrubber installations/orders at 388 in early October giving the Stockholm-listed company a 28% market share on current orders.
A ship using a scrubber will be able to continue to use high sulfur heavy fuel oil in 2020 when the global sulfur cap falls to 0.50%. Yet the take up of the technology has been relatively weak with orders representing under 5% of the global vessel orderbook.
The cost of the installation, maintanence expense and lost cargo space are some of the reasons cited by ship operators for not wanting to engage with the technology. However, marine analyst Krispen Aktinson says demand for scrubbers could rise given recent experience.
In 2015, the sulfur cap in emission control areas in Europe and North America fell to 0.10% sparking a rise in orders. "This could potentially happen again in 2020 when the global fuel specification comes into force," he wrote in the latest IHS Markit update on the topic.
