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Maersk Issues €500 Million in Green Bonds to Finance Methanol-Fuelled Ships
Shipping giant AP Moller-Maersk has issued €500 million in green bonds to finance its first orders of methanol-fuelled container ships.
The company placed the ten-year bonds with a coupon of 0.75%, its lowest rate on record, it said in a statement on its website on Friday. The placement was significantly oversubscribed, with a final order book of €3.7 billion.
The funds raised will go towards Maersk's first methanol-fuelled ship order, a 2,100 TEU feeder vessel for delivery in mid-2023, as well as its subsequent order of eight 16,000 TEU boxships being delivered from the first quarter of 2024.
"Issuing green financing instruments is a further step to integrating sustainability into our financing operations as it is an effective tool for channelling investments to projects with positive environmental impact and thereby contributing to the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris Agreement," Patrick Jany, chief financial officer at Maersk, said in the statement.
"With this green bond, we aim at diversifying our investor base by reaching out to new investors and increasing the transparency of our ESG ambitions and performance even further towards our stakeholders."