Seaspan Opts for Scrubbers on 10 Vessel Newbuild Order

by Ship & Bunker News Team
Monday September 27, 2021

Seaspan Corporation (Seaspan) today said it has placed an order for 10, 7,000 TEU capacity box ships that will all be equipped with scrubbers.

Delivery of the vessels are expected in the second quarter through to the fourth quarter of 2024 at which point they will enter long-term charters with "a leading global liner customer."

Seaspan did not elaborate on who it had placed the order with other than saying it was a "major shipyard".

If nothing else, the order highlights the enduring interest in exhaust gas cleaning systems (EGCS) even though industry attention has firmly shifted away from IMO 2020-focused sulfur regs and onto its decarbonization efforts.

To that end, the typical 25+ year lifespan means the fossil-fuelled vessels from today's order should still be operating in 2050, a date by which over 150 industry heavyweights believe it is possible to achieve full decarbonization of the shipping industry.

But this doesn't mean the prospect of early scrapping or later fuel systems changes for the Order Book's fossil-fuelled tonnage, with the development of CO2-neutral drop in fuels already maturing in the form of biofuels and emerging within the electrofuels space.

Relevant to Seaspan's order is that scrubber manufacturers also believe scrubbers can be adapted to capture carbon "relatively quickly".

Ship & Bunker News Team
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