The Greater Bay Area: Navigating Polluted Seas

It used to be said that Britain ruled the waves. While those days are long gone, a small but significant residue of the shipbuilding and design prowess that lay at the heart of its empire remains in place today. In the late 19th century, when Britain’s maritime supremacy was at its height, shipyards in the Scottish city of Glasgow were producing more than half of the British Empire’s military and mercantile vessels – a status which saw Glasgow labelled the “second city of empire” after London.

Now, a company born out of that city’s rich seafaring history has turned its attention to Hong Kong and the Greater Bay Area (GBA) as it looks to provide solutions to the very 21st-century problem of the planet's polluted seas.

Glasgow-based environmental protection company, Cleanship , was set up in 2012. Earlier this year, it opened its first office in Hong Kong with a view to expanding into the GBA as the project develops and grows.

The aim of the GBA is to link nine cities in Guangdong province with the Hong Kong and Macao Special Administrative regions to create an economic zone with a population of 70 million and a combined GDP of US$1.6 trillion. It’s designed to form a key component in the next phase of China’s economic development.

Marine Environment

A spin-off from the Malin Group , which has more than 100 years’ experience in providing services to those operating in the marine, oil and gas and renewables industries, Cleanship – which now has offices in Istanbul and Shanghai as well as Hong Kong – counts itself as one of the world’s leading marine environmental protection companies.

Shipping is a major cause of harmful air pollution in Europe. By 2020, shipping emissions of sulphur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) from shipping could exceed the emissions of these pollutants from all other sources in the EU. This pollution must be reduced dramatically to protect health and the environment and to make shipping a more sustainable form of transport. Technical measures exist that could cut the level of pollution from ships by at least 80-90%. Doing so would be much cheaper than cutting the same amount of pollution from land-based sources.

Since 2012, Cleanship has introduced technologies such as drainage purification devices to help shipowners and operators around the world reduce the impact of ships on the environment and avoid falling foul of various upcoming environmental protection laws. It has retrofitted ballast water treatment equipment and so-called “scrubber” systems to clean dirty ship fuel in line with international sulphur emission requirements in more than 250 ships around the world.

The company’s Business Development Manager Stuart McKenna says the coming months and years will be a period of significant change and adaptation for the shipping industry as it works to meet the requirements of recently ratified international environmental legislation. He believes that Hong Kong, with its established maritime community, is an ideal base from which Cleanship can expand their operations.

Challenges and Aspirations

Describing what the company hopes to achieve, McKenna said: “As a services orientated company that specialises in helping ship owners comply with environmental legislation, our aim is to give expert assistance to the industry as it faces up to the challenges of the new rules and tries to meet its aspirations to help create cleaner seas around the world.

“We are dealing with today’s problems, one of which results from the ballast water convention agreed under the UN International Maritime Organisation . This means that over the next four or five years, around 40,000 ships will have to retrofit treatment systems to help ensure that the ballast water they use is clean and complies with the new regulations which aim to ensure that expelled ballast water does not pollute or endanger marine life in the seas and oceans around the globe.”

Ballast water is an essential component in ensuring the stability, structural integrity and navigational safety of a vessel, especially during adjustments to its weight as it loads and unloads at ports.

Significant Investment

Cleanship has been making innovations in its design and technical capabilities for more than seven years now and has had hands-on involvement in retrofitting clean-up systems on more than 250 vessels. As a result, McKenna believes the company can provide an edge when it comes to helping clients get a proper return on their investment.

The first step in the retrofit process is to undertake a vessel survey and 3D laser scan, in order to study the technical implications of potential ballast water management systems or exhaust gas scrubbers onboard. Comprehensive technical checklists will then be prepared to ensure engineers have all the required data and drawings needed to undertake a feasibility study and system selection process.

McKenna pointed out that there are substantial costs involved in the process, saying: “The average cost of a ballast treatment system ranges from between US$200,000 to US$300,000 depending on the scale and size of the individual system. It is a significant investment for shipowners. But we have already retrofitted more than 250 ships and have been constantly innovating since 2012, so I believe we can offer our customers an extremely competitive return on their investment.”

Cleanship says its aim is “to provide impartial advice, assistance and innovative services to shipowners and operators in improving their environmental impact”. To try to protect its impartiality, the company takes steps such as maintaining no commercial agreements with any ballast water management or exhaust gas scrubber system manufacturers.

Maritime Community

Explaining why Cleanship decided on Hong Kong as a location for the company’s expansion, McKenna said: “The two great things about Hong Kong which have impressed me and make me believe this is the best city from which to become involved and succeed in the GBA are its closely-knit, yet welcoming, maritime community and the fact that if a Hong Kong partner or business says they are going to do something, they pull out all the stops to make that thing happen. These are two qualities you rarely see working together.”

As an example of how welcoming Hong Kong’s maritime community is, McKenna pointed to the fact that, despite only being in the city a matter of months, Cleanship has already been admitted as a member to the Hong Kong Shipowners Association . He also stressed the wealth of talent available in Hong Kong, and added that, in order to build on its innovations in clean-up systems, the company has set up the online Cleanship Academy and Cleanship Portal to train and attract staff from that talent pool.

Outlining what the company hopes to achieve in making these moves, McKenna said: “Our aim is for Cleanship to become synonymous with the environmental improvement of the shipping industry.”