ICS, IACS, BIMCO, Intercargo, Intertanko, OCIMF, CESS Representatives of the leading worldwide Associations of Shipbuilders, Classification Societies and Shipowners met in Busan, Korea for their annual Tripartite meeting hosted by the Korean Register of Shipping and KOSHIPA, the national shipbuilders association.The meeting was united in expressing its serious concern with the obstacles that all three parties face as the Ballast Water Management Convention moves closer to ratification, eight years after its text was adopted. It was always going to be challenging to fit ballast water treatment equipment to all of the world's 70,000 ships.New technologies needed to be explored and developed to treat the volume of water required by ocean going ships as ballast. However the slow pace of ratification by IMO member States has negated the carefully staged implementation programme that was a feature of the original Convention. Now that the fixed timeline for implementation has passed without entry into force it means that, as soon as the Ballast Water Management Convention does meet its ratification criteria, thousands of ships will need to be fitted in a very short time.Whilst strenuous efforts were made by industry, this will put unattainable demands on ship repair facilities, engineering capabilities and on ...
Read moreDetails