STRONG passenger, ro-ro and vehicle carrier markets are expected to help Italy’s Grimaldi Group deliver its best-ever financial performance this year, says joint managing director Emanuele Grimaldi.

“Last year was the best in the history of Grimaldi — this year should be even better,” Grimaldi told Lloyd’s List who said the company expects a full-year turnover of “just above” €5bn ($4.57bn) up from €4.8bn in 2022.

Grimaldi said that the introduction of new liner vehicle carrier services from Europe to to Asia, Australasia and Middle East markets have been a major driver in raising revenues this year, because of rocketing Chinese car exports.

“Before we only had a tramp service approach to these markets — now we have 12 ships regularly employed — this is a very important development.”

Investment in newbuildings at the company in the past year has been focused on vehicle carriers with Grimaldi now having 20, 9,000 car capacity ammonia-ready, ships on order at China’s China Merchants Jiangsu and Shanghai Waigaoqiao for delivery from 2025 through to 2028. 

The newbuildings were originally expected to operate on liquefied natural gas until ammonia fuel becomes available but this option has now been ruled out.

“I don’t believe LNG is a response to reduce the heating of our planet, even when we were considering it I was never in favour, so my new ships will initially operate on conventional fuel with scrubbers.”

The new car carriers will also be fitted with systems to collect plastics from the oceans and potentially a carbon capture system.

Grimaldi said the company is now working on its next tranche of newbuildings in the other sectors in which it serves.

“My next newbuilding orders will be for passenger ferries but I would like to see more efficiency development on the technical side before we sign.”

Most of Grimaldi’s newbuilding contracts in the past five years have been signed with Chinese shipbuilders although South Korea’s Hyundai Mipo is building a series of new generation ro-ro cargo vessels.

They were ordered for the company’s deepsea combined ro-ro and container services between Europe and West Africa. The first two of the six vessel, 4,700 lane metre, series were delivered in 2023.

“Most of our vessels are now being built in China and I have seen a very huge improvement in the quality of ships being built there — the quality of the products now is excellent. Our ro-pax ferry delivered from China this year (the 65,000 gt Finnsirius (IMO: 9902419) has won several awards and we are are receiving a lot of complements about it from our customers.”

Grimaldi said he would like to order vessels again in Europe however pricing would never be competitive with Asian shipyards.

“The decline of European shipbuilding is sad but if they can’t remain competitive what can you do? We did try to get some ro-pax ferries built in Italy but the cost would have been 100% more than at Far East shipyards — it is not practical.”

While all Grimaldi Group services are doing nicely the downturn in the transatlantic container trades means the strong 2021 and 2022 contribution from its combined ro-ro containership operation Atlantic Container Line will not be repeated this year.

“We are fortunate that ACL also carries cars and ro-ro cargo as the container side is much worse compared to the previous year — but ACL is still running in the black.”

Current chairman of the International Chamber of Shipping, Grimaldi was one of the speakers at the last Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP27) and will fly to COP28 in Dubai in December following the handover of the ro-pax newbuilding Finncanopus (IMO: 9902421) in China.

“We’ll be talking about the development of supply of ammonia fuel at COP28 — we have to make it happen. By 2030 we will see a big number of important shipowners using ammonia fuel but we are only at the experimental stage now.”

The ICS and the International Bunker Industry Association has jointly submitted a proposal to the International Maritime Organization for a simplified global greenhouse gas fuel standard.

The proposal has set out draft amendments to Annex VI of the Marpol Convention with regards maximum permitted GHG intensity of marine fuels in 2030 which will be followed by a tightening of this standard in 2040.

Grimaldi firmly believes only a global approach can solve shipping’s approach to GHG and CO2 emissions and has been a strong critic of the European Union’s Emissions Trading Scheme.

“It is clear shipowners are responsible for making the decision on future fuels and fragmentation will not help — creating a system where most countries will have similar systems to ETS will be a nightmare — the EU should have concentrated in trying to contribute to find a worldwide solution.

“ETS will only address 7% of emissions of an industry that is contributing 2% of global GHG emissions — ETS is not addressing the issue and will be a nightmare of a tax — it's much more important to address all the emissions of the world.”