Environmentally friendly transport

Transport by water is the right way to go! That is the promotional slogan of the Inland Waterways Information Office. Ships are the cleanest way to transport goods from A to B. This is mainly due to their low fuel consumption. For example, ships can transport a cargo of 1,200,000 kilograms from Rotterdam to Hanover using 2,500 litres of diesel, whereas a lorry would need around 5,750 litres of diesel. In addition, lorries also cause increased traffic congestion on the roads. However, good is never good enough for inland shipping, and in order to maintain our lead, we are always looking for ways to make our transport even cleaner.

We set high standards when it comes to reducing emissions and have been working to make our company more environmentally friendly for a number of years now, and we are continuing this trend! Since 2017, all our ships have been sailing with a so-called long-life additive in their fuel. This results in fuel savings of 1 per cent for our company, but more importantly, it extends the life of the engine through cleaner combustion. We have been able to reduce the emissions of our engines by 40 per cent. As a second measure, we have invested in electricity on our ships. Each ship is equipped with a ‘multi-inverter’ and batteries with a large storage capacity. This has made it possible to minimise the use of the generator. This results in fuel savings of 10,000 litres per ship per year. That is approximately 10 per cent of total consumption.

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Solar panels

Our company recently invested in the installation of solar panels. By harvesting energy from the sun, which we can store in a battery pack, the use of a generator is reduced even further. We also have a jet tube on four of our five ships, which provides a 20 percent fuel saving. A jet tube is a structure around the ship’s propeller that ensures optimal displacement of the propeller water. We also want to further protect the environment by installing engines that meet the latest emission requirements. For example, we have equipped four of the five ships with a CCR 2-approved bow thruster engine and one CCR1-approved main engine. With the purchase of the fourth vessel, we can add another main and bow thruster engine with CCR2 approval to our company.

“Good is never good enough for inland shipping, and to maintain our lead, we are always looking for ways to make our transport even cleaner.”