What CMA CGM is doing is really gutsy and if things work as planned, the January post "Shipping: CMA CGM May Be Building A Big Fuel Price Advantage" comes to fruition and the French mega-carrier has created quite the competitive advantage for itself..
From The Loadstar via gCaptain:
CMA CGM shortsea subsidiary Containerships has received its fourth LNG-powered vessel, the 1,380 teu Containerships Arctic.....MORE
The vessel will bunker with approximately 200 tons of LNG at Rotterdam and will be deployed on the intra-European carrier’s Baltic service after a period covering for CMA CGM on its Baltic feeder service network.
The vessel joins its three sister ships, Containerships Aurora, Containerships Nord and Containerships Polar, with the final two in a series of five yet to be confirmed by the carrier.
The Finnish container line had placed orders for the LNG ships prior to its acquisition by CMA CGM in June 2018, but the strategy was fully supported by the new owner, which has decided to go down the same route with an order of 20 LNG-fuelled ships, including nine 23,000 teu ULCVs.
The first of these, the French-flagged 23,000 teu CMA CGM Jacques Saade, named after line’s founder, was launched in September and is claimed to reduce emissions of sulphur oxides and fine particles by 99%, compared with current marine fuel options.
However, other carriers have yet to follow CMA CGM’s LNG-fuelled strategy, citing continued concerns over the infrastructure to support its bunkering. And for existing vessels, retrofitting is not a viable option....
Regarding that last point on infrastructure we saw this a couple weeks ago:
Shipping: "CMA CGM bolsters its LNG fuel supply with Total deal"
And for background , here's 2018's Shipping: "Why CMA CGM ordered 'game changing' 22,000 TEU LNG-powered containerships".
