Singapore goes electric: LoI signed for supply vessel newbuilds

The LoI for the vessels was arranged under the purview of the Singapore maritime consortium known as the Coastal Sustainability Alliance (CSA), which was founded by Kuok Maritime Group (Singapore). Kuok, in turn, is made up of PaxOcean Holdings, Pacific Carriers Limited and PACC Offshore Services Holdings.

The alliance is expected to invest more than S$20M (US$15M) over the next 10 years to build the next generation of Singapore’s maritime ecosystem and accelerate decarbonisation, electrification and energy-efficient logistics and engineering by 2030.

PaxOcean chief executive and chairperson of the CSA Council Tan Thai Yong announced in March 2022 that the alliance would design a series of fully electric PXO harbour vessels and floating platforms for wireless offshore charging.

PaxOcean and Ken Energy are both partners in the CSA, as is the Tecnology Centre for Offshore and Marine Singapore, which is collaborating on the project by building digital twins for the electric vessels to optimise the vessels’ operations. 

During Singapore’s annual maritime week, the CSA added 11 new members including Ampotech, Columbia Ship Management Singapore, Green COP, Ken Energy, RMS Marine & Offshore Service, M1, MagicPort, Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT), Sinwa Singapore, ST Engineering, and Swift Total Logistics. This brings the CSA to 18 members since its formation in March 2022.

"The contributions from the new members will accelerate CSA’s efforts to electrify, digitalise and decarbonise Singapore’s coastal vessels, strengthen marine supply chains and build Singapore’s next-generation maritime ecosystem," the CSA said.

Ken Energy managing director Desmond Chong said, “In our focus of developing and implementing green energy solutions, we aim to advance the use of renewable energy and alternative fuels, as a means of reducing emissions and promoting a more sustainable and greener environment. As a start, we are looking into reducing our carbon footprint by exploring the use of PXO e-supply vessels to supply provisions and ship spares to our own fleet of bunker tankers. By adopting new technologies and ship designs, we anticipate a boost in optimisation for a more efficient marine supply chain.”  

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