COLLABORATION ON SCRUBBER INSTALLATIONS

Tritec Marine – a Northern Marine Group company – entered into partnership with Shanghai-based Bluesoul in 2017, to supply the shipping community with scrubber solutions which will meet upcoming International Maritime Organization (IMO) 2020 sulphur emission regulation. The new regulation requires vessels to reduce their sulphur oxide emissions to 0.50% m/m by 1st January 2020.

While Tritec Marine provides plan approval and consultancy engineering to the partnership, Bluesoul provides considerable manufacturing capability.

In 2019, fifty engineers will manufacture and install 8-metre-tall scrubbers into the funnels of various vessel types. The cleaning system within the non-pressurised cylinders remove sulphur oxides from the ship’s exhaust gas, thus reducing the vessel’s environmental footprint. 

 “Bluesoul and Tritec Marine adopt bottom-up design approaches, meaning we put ship owners’ operational needs in mind; we fully understand ships’ itineraries, remaining life span, actual engine loads and all matters that might affect CAPEX and OPEX,” said Wei Wang, CEO, Bluesoul. 

He added: “Bluesoul currently has three production bases, each scaled to produce more than 10 scrubber towers per month, so we are well prepared for the surging demand in the coming years. It is however shipyard availability which is key to ensuring new orders are delivered prior to the IMO 2020 regulation deadline and we have 3 dedicated shipyards, with an additional 4 in reserve, so we deliberately retain substantial redundancy in dock spaces for our own EPC projects. In fact, we are one of the very few scrubber makers in the market that could offer total turnkey solution packages to shipowners.”

Implementing scrubbers across vessel fleets allows Bluesoul and Tritec Marine to use a “Think Big” work approach, meaning they start all preliminary works early, such as 3D scanning and onboard surveys. 

Simultaneously taking large numbers of similar orders allows them to modularize each sub-system, which in return makes economies of scale in design, material, sourcing and production all possible. 

David Scott, General Manager Director, Tritec Marine, added: “We have a proven track record of technical project and shipyard engineering work in China, so this partnership is built on a very solid foundation of existing knowledge and experience”. 

“For the system itself, we produce a modular design, meaning when the ship arrives in the shipyard the equipment is already being built. It means we don’t have to dismantle part of the ship and then reconstruct it with the equipment inside, which would take a long time. With our solution, we can fit the scrubber efficiently and effectively in around 2 to 3 weeks. Ship owners and their technical and commercial teams are very busy running ships, so we manage these projects for them. The solutions meet their needs and ultimately satisfy IMO 2020 requirements.”