At this year’s SMM, MAN ES hosted a panel discussion on the retrofit market and future fuels. The speakers were: Silke Lehmköster, managing director fleet at Hapag-Lloyd, Henning Jongebloed, sales manager at Meyer Re, Bernd Siebert, head of retrofit at MAN PrimServ and Klaus Rasmussen head of retrofit projects at MAN PrimServ.

“Our strategy is to become a carbon neutral shipping company by 2045,” declared Lehmköster, adding another goal is to have a slow steaming fleet while also “looking into” alternative fuels.

Moderating the discussion was Nils Søholt, communications manager at MAN, who asked Siebert how many vessels on a global scale are suitable for retrofits. Siebert answered that there’s roughly 10,000 ships that are candidates for retrofits, with 1,500 of them being suitable for having their engines converted to an alternative fuel to aid decarbonisation.