Maersk Broker Advisory Services and McKinsey & Company have joined forces to assist shipowners and operators in defining their decarbonisation roadmap and strategy.

Based on market research from Maersk Broker Advisory Services and an AI-based solution from McKinsey’s QuantumBlack, which leverages technological and economic modelling of ship efficiency levers and alternative fuels, the collaboration aims to guide the industry to take future investment decisions on a well-informed basis backed by data to avoid stranded assets and unnecessary capital expenditures.

Maersk Broker Advisory Services, part of Maersk Broker K/S, and McKinsey & Company agreed to establish a partnership to develop and launch the Fleet Decarbonisation Optimizer tool to assist stakeholders in the maritime industry in developing their decarbonisation strategies. The partnership is built on proprietary research of both Maersk Broker Advisory Services and McKinsey & Company on the total cost of ownership and carbon abatement implications of ship efficiency levers and alternative fuels like e-ammonia, e-methanol, bio-methanol, bio-LNG, biodiesel, and others.

The shipping industry is recognised as a “hard-to-abate” sector, as the decarbonisation solutions of the industry carry a high abatement cost compared to current alternatives. This creates significant uncertainty, and all shipowners and operators will be confronted with difficult strategic decisions in the upcoming decade. The collaboration aims to help stakeholders in the maritime industry to make these decisions on the best possible information platform with expert guidance.

The aim of the collaboration between Maersk Broker Advisory Services and McKinsey & Company is knowledge sharing, mutual access to relevant data, and the development and launch of an AI-based optimisation model that provides a tailor-made roadmap for cost-effective decarbonisation of entire fleets. The model incorporates not just a large amount of key data from the maritime industry but also utilises data from other industries going through similar developments and challenges with respect to decarbonisation.

“We believe that the strategic partnership accelerates the process of successfully decarbonising the shipping industry. Maersk Broker Advisory Services and McKinsey & Company have an interest in using our resources to help the maritime industry in its decarbonisation journey, and we believe that our combined knowledge will permit our clients to take better and well-informed investment decisions. In Maersk Broker Advisory Services as well as the wider Maersk Broker organization we have technical, commercial, and financial expertise that can help the maritime industry to develop and execute its decarbonisation strategy,” said Jesper Bo Hansen, Managing Director of Maersk Broker Advisory Services.

“We couldn’t be more excited to launch this partnership with Maersk Broker Advisory Services to help shipping industry players find their most cost-optimal decarbonisation pathway. There is a lot of ‘noise’ in the public domain about different decarbonisation options, and our AI-based optimisation modelling will help shipowners and operators find the ‘signal’ amidst the ‘noise’ for their specific fleet and operating requirements,” said Matt Stone, Partner at McKinsey & Company.

Italian classification society RINA has signed an agreement with Shanghai Waigaoqiao Shipbuilding (SWS) for the classification of the largest ever cruise ship to be built in China.

Speaking at the signing ceremony Mr. Wang Qi, Chairman at SWS said, “The Chinese cruise ship industry is expanding rapidly, and the new vessel is being designed to respond to that growth as well as Chinese tastes. China’s burgeoning economy is providing increased demand for leisure activities encouraged by the Chinese government, while its large geographic area and population promise sustained demand and no shortage of potential routes.”

With an overall length of about 341m and a gross tonnage of approximately 140,000gt, the cruise ship will be the largest ever built in China with a capacity of more than 6,500 passengers and crew on board.

The ship is part of a joint venture between China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC) and Carnival Corporation. Work began on the vessel last year and is being aided by a joint venture involving CSSC and Fincantieri which granted a technology license of the ship model platform and is providing technical and project service support throughout the shipbuilding process. A local Chinese subsidiary of Fincantieri will be supplying the vessel’s cabins.

Mario Moretti, Asia Marine Senior Director at RINA, said, “The Chinese shipbuilding industry has been the number one in the world for some time. But this has historically been focused on merchant and cargo vessels. We are very pleased to be working closely with SWS in building China’s largest ever passenger ship. The agreement represents a milestone in Chinese shipbuilding as it expands into the passenger sector responding to the growth of sea-borne tourism.”

The cruise project will be built according to the highest standards ever applied in China for environmental protection with RINA additional class notations “Green Plus” and “HVSC” (High Voltage Shore Connection). In addition, the ship design and equipment will follow the RINA notation “Biosafe Ship”, aiming to control and prevent possible on-board infection outbreak.

The expected delivery date of the vessel is December 2025.

IMO Secretary-General Kitack Lim has welcomed the World Health Organization’s decision to name seafarers as one of the groups of transportation workers that should be prioritised for COVID-19 vaccination in instances of limited supplies.

The updated prioritisation guidance for Stage II of its vaccine roadmap from the WHO’s Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization (SAGE) includes: “Seafarers and air crews who work on vessels that carry goods and no passengers, with special attention to seafarers who are stranded at sea and prevented from crossing international borders for crew change due to travel restrictions.”

IMO Secretary General Lim said, “I am glad to see that the WHO recognises the importance of vaccinating seafarers on cargo ships. These individuals are responsible for transporting over 80% of all goods around the world, including food, medicine and vaccine supplies – and have continued to do so despite extremely challenging circumstances. Seafarers will play a key role in the global recovery, and barriers to international travel and crew change must be removed.”

The SAGE guidance aims to provide guidance for overall programme priorities as well as vaccine-specific recommendations and consists of three steps: Step 1: A values framework; Step 2: Roadmap for prioritizing uses of COVID-19 vaccines; Step 3: Vaccine-specific recommendations. The vaccine prioritisation roadmap considers priority populations for vaccination based on epidemiologic setting and vaccine supply scenarios and can be used by countries to shape their national response to the pandemic.

The IMO has made a number of calls for priority vaccination for seafarers this year, including issuing a joint statement with other UN organizations in March 2021, calling for seafarers and aircrew to be prioritised for COVID-19 vaccination. In May, IMO adopted a resolution which encouraged priority vaccination for seafarers in national COVID-19 vaccination programmes and Secretary-General Lim called on all IMO Member States to designate seafarers as ‘key workers’ and support a fair global distribution of COVID-19 vaccines.