Vakaru Laivu Remontas (VLR), a ship repairing subsidiary of the Estonian-owned Vakaru Laivu Gamykla (Western Shipyard, or VLG), has equipped five large ships of the Dutch company Spliethoff with exhaust gas cleaning scrubbers, LETA/BNS reports.
VLR planned to continue cooperation with Spliethoff in the future as the Dutch company intended to obtain the European Union’s (EU) financing for the upgrade of its other vessels, Dmitry Kuzmin, chief specialist at VLR’s marketing and sales service, said in a press release. Following the upgrade of the first Spliethoff’s vessel last October, Jolanta Toliusyte, head of communications at the VLG Group, told BNS that the value of the project was not being disclosed.
Spliethoff has ships of approximately 70 types in its fleet. VLR is one of the three ship repair companies of Estonia's BLRT Grupp. The ship repair group, which also includes Tallinn Shipyard and Turku Repair Yard, is a leader in ship repair and modernization in the Baltic Sea region.New vessel fuel sulfur requirements came into effect in the EU in 2015, prompting shipping operators to look for new fuel alternatives or to upgrade their fleets.