Japan: NYK Receives Highest Rating on SMBC Environmental Assessment Loan

For a third consecutive year, NYK has received the highest rating on the Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation’s Environmental Assessment Loan.

NYK places environmental issues at the top of its corporate priorities. In fact, the company’s medium-term management plan, “More Than Shipping 2013,” establishes a clear goal of increasing fuel-efficiency by 10 percent by 2015 over the amount used in 2010. In this year’s SMBC assessment, NYK received high ratings for its environmental management, environmental business, the company’s approach to environmental preservation measures, and the company’s grasp of negative environmental impacts. In particular, the company’s environmental management was praised.

One of the NYK Group’s new environmental engineering technologies to improve fuel efficiency is an air-lubrication system featuring a blower that provides air to the vessel bottom, thus reducing friction between the vessel bottom and the sea. After this system was installed on two of the group’s vessels and its benefit confirmed, an air-lubrication system using the vessel’s scavenging air was additionally developed and installed on a new coal carrier delivered to NYK. This was the first time for a coal carrier anywhere in the world to be equipped with such as system.

The NYK Group has also decided to introduce an onboard broadband communication system on all its containerships with the aim of reducing CO2 emissions during ship operations. Moreover, the company has implemented its Innovative Bunker and Idle-time Saving (IBIS) project, which aims to achieve optimal economic ship operations by sharing between land and ships real-time information related to ship operations. NYK is making use of the advancements and findings achieved through these projects to develop in areas that will allow the group to provide optimal service by type of vessel and shipping conditions.

NYK has also received ISO14001 certification for about 800 ships, domestic and foreign group companies, and chartering services. NYK has constructed a global environmental management system that is unparalleled in other companies and tries to understand and disclose a wider array and more accurate environmental impact data, even if it is negative. Moreover, NYK started reporting Scope 3 emissions from 2012, thus allowing the company to report the amount of emissions generated by all of NYK’s business activities. In fact, NYK was the first shipping company to be certified by a third party for the company’s collection, calculation, and reporting of Scope 3 emissions. The transparency of NYK’s disclosures was recognized by the company’s inclusion in two major 2012 carbon leadership indexes compiled by the Carbon Disclosure Project. In fact, NYK was the only company in the shipping and logistics industry to be included in these two indexes.

The NYK Group will continue its efforts to develop and make use of new environmental approaches.