The Chronicle Herald.ca By TOM PETERS Business Reporter – 9 Apr 2009
The world’s shipping lines are under international pressure to help protect the oceans from pollution. Zim Container Line is one of several major carriers that is taking the challenge seriously.
Zim, a customer at the Port of Halifax since 1972, bought one of its newest vessels into Halifax on Wednesday as part of the inauguration of its service from Asia to the Mediterranean.
Zim San Francisco, a Panamax container ship with a capacity of slightly under 5,000 TEUs (20-foot equivalent units) and only two months out of the Daewoo Shipyard in South Korea, leaves little evidence of pollution in its wake.
“Our company sets environmental standards,” the ship’s chief officer, Timo Kopf, 28, said Wednesday.
“We don’t throw any garbage overboard when at sea, except food waste, which first goes through a grinder.”
The ship, owned by the CONTI Group of Germany and chartered by Zim, has an incinerator on board and what garbage can’t be burned, like tin cans, is bagged and discharged when the vessel reaches port.
The ship also has a bilge water separator that separates any waste oil from waste water that might be discharged into the ocean.
“We also have sludge tanks and discharge that material to contracted companies when we get to port,” he said.
Chief Officer Kopf said Zim follows international standards and has its own environmental targets for food waste disposal.
Zim San Francisco is one of 15 vessels in the Asia-Mediterranean service that calls at Halterm container terminal twice a week. The port rotation is Skekou, China; Hong Kong; Ningbo, China; Shanghai; Pusan, South Korea; Balboa, Spain; Panama Canal, Kingston, Jamaica; Savannah, Ga.; New York; Halifax; Tarragona, Spain; and Haifa, Israel.
The German-flagged vessel, with a crew of 21, burns about 110 tonnes of fuel a day at minimum speed and up to 115 tonnes at maximum speed. The ship can stay at sea for more than three weeks before refuelling.