Alfa Laval Joins Wärtsilä in Reporting Q4 Decline in Scrubber Sales

by Ship & Bunker News Team
Tuesday February 4, 2020

Engineering company Alfa Laval has reported a decline in demand for scrubber installations in the fourth quarter of 2019, following recent similar comments from rival firm Wärtsilä.

Orders of the company's PureSOx scrubber system "decreased significantly compared to the fourth quarter [of 2018]," Alfa Laval said Tuesday.

"Uncertainties in the marine industry, mainly regarding the availability and price of new fuels coupled with the lack of short-term installation capacity at retrofit yards contributed to a generally lower demand for scrubber technologies."

Last week Wärtsilä reported demand for its scrubbers had declined in the fourth quarter from "exceptionally high" levels a year earlier, also citing uncertainty over the price and availability of fuels as a factor.

The decline is likely to reflect peculiarities around the timing of scrubber installations, rather than a general lack of interest in the systems.

Anyone considering ordering a scrubber from scratch in the fourth quarter of last year would have been unlikely to have the installation completed at the start of 2020, when price spreads between high sulfur fuel oil and very low sulfur fuel oil were likely to be at their highest, and may have instead waited to see how pricing and availability played out in the first quarter of this year.

A spike in freight rates in the fourth quarter may also have led some owners to put off scrubber orders until the freight market weakened again.

Ship & Bunker News Team
To contact the editor responsible for this story email us at editor@shipandbunker.com