Reederei Bernd Sibum awarded German Government funding for ship upgrades

German shipping company Reederei Bernd Sibum has received funding from the German Government for investment in new ship technologies to be incorporated in four freighters currently under construction in China.

The funding under the "sustainable modernisation of coastal ships" (nachhaltige modernisierung von küstenschiffen/NAMKU) program has been awarded to Reederei Bernd Sibum by the German Federal Ministry of Digital Affairs and Transport.

The program requires co-investment on behalf of the vessel owner.

Reederei Bernd Sibum placed the order for the four vessels in June last year.

The vessels are being built with the capability to sail entirely on biofuel, as well as with batteries for peak shaving and port operations. They will also be configured to be hybrid ready.

With the NAMKU award, the vessels are being upgraded to sail on hybrid propulsion with a PTO/PTI system. This upgrade will provide the option of fully electric propulsion. This will then provide the ships with redundancy for the diesel propulsion engine.

The vessels will also be fitted with heat recovery systems and wind-assisted propulsion systems that can be operated automatically.

Editor's note: Over the last four decades or so, Baird Maritime has seen many similar proposals fail dramatically, with technology characterised by complexity, expense and almost total lack of result.

Funding for such projects inevitably involves direct subsidies, or subsidies-in-effect to the companies pushing them on governments or other gullible investors (not to mention very generous remuneration for the executives involved). Such businesses or business units tend not to stick around very long at all.