Page 23: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (August 2021)

INTERVIEW GLENN EDVARDSEN, CEO, UECC

Glenn, to start, can you give a by-the-num- bers overview of UECC?

United European Car Carrier is a pan-European trading car- rier, trading up to the Baltic, as far east as Turkey and down to north Africa. We operate about 18 vessels (of which) UECC- owns six, ranging from (a capacity of) 5,000 cars down to 1,000. Besides transporting cars, we also lift quite a lot of breakbulk (300,000 tons/year), as well as high and heavy, a ? exible ? eet with strengthened decks and ramps. I think it’s worth mentioning that our ambitions is to be the leading pro- vider of sustainable short sea operation.

UECC made the news earlier this year with the keel lane for its third LNG battery hy- brid PCTC. Can you give an overview of this series of vessels as well as the typical or planned operating routes?

We ordered three new vessels, the ? rst one to be delivered in October 2021, with two more next year. We already have two dual fuel LNG vessels from 2016. We are on a path with more sustainable vessels, with reduced emissions being the number one priority. These are dual-fuel ships, not strictly

LNG, meaning we have ? exibility. Do we believe LNG will be the fuel of the future? No, not at all. We think something better will come along, but today it is the most environmental- ly friendly fuel on the market. When we see something better come along, I’m sure we will also be able to burn that. (With these three new ships) we also introduced the battery element, which we think is extremely important. It’s not like we are able to sail on battery alone; then, probably, the battery pack- age would be bigger than the vessel. But we are able to reduce the emission even more than when only running on LNG.

It seems that “? exibility” is a key word in your operations, your future. Can you give some more speci? cs on the hybrid power

Photo courtesy UECC www.marinelink.com 23

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