Samskip named lead partner in Norway’s project for next generation of sustainable shortsea shipping
Europe’s largest multimodal operator has been named lead partner in ‘Seashuttle’, a project seeking to bring emissions-free, autonomous container ships to market that also operate at a profit, Samskip said in a press release. The announcement coincides with the award of €6 million of Norwegian government money to Project SeaShuttle to take forward development of two all-electric ships slated to connect Poland, Swedish west coast ports and the Oslo fjord.
The vessels will draw on state-of-the-art hydrogen fuel cells for their propulsion power. Seashuttle is one of six initiatives included in ‘PILOT-E’, a €100 million-plus scheme involving the Research Council, Innovation Norway and Enova, aiming to bring solutions for the climate-neutral industries of the future to market more quickly.
Seashuttle funding came from four Norwegian ministries (Food and Fishing; Climate and Environment; Petroleum and Energy; and Transport and Communications).
Other Seashuttle partners include logistics consultant FlowChange, technology group Kongsberg Maritime, hydrogen integrator HYON and Massterly, a Kongsberg Maritime/Wilhelmsen venture developing autonomous vessel solutions.
Final Seashuttle ports of call are yet to be determined, but it is already known that the fuel cell technology will convert hydrogen into power for propulsion in a process where electrolysis is envisaged as taking place in a Norwegian port. For the moment, the project envisages zero emissions during 20% of a round trip between Poland and the Oslo Fjord – sufficient for all operations in Norwegian waters. That proportion will grow as more stations fill hydrogen along the route.
Samskip operates one of Europe’s largest multimodal container logistics systems. The Samskip network has the flexibility to move containers door-to-door between over 30 countries from the United Kingdom and Ireland to Russia, Scandinavia, Poland, the Baltic States, Finland and Iceland in the north to Spain. Samskip offers a wide range of routing options, utilising road, rail, sea and inland waterways as appropriate to provide the best combination of rate and transit time to suit individual customer requirements and preferences. It has over 13,000 containers at its disposal, ranging from 20ft to 45ft pallet-wide high cube containers including reefers, curtain-siders and flat-racks.
