From 31st December, 2020, all existing ships sailing under the EU-flag and ships flying the flag of a third country calling at an EU port or anchorage must have on board an inventory of hazardous materials (IHM) verified by the relevant authorities or an RO, such as the Korean Register.
The same rules came into effect for EU-flagged vessels on 31st December, 2018.
KR will be working with partners HMI GbR (QSU & exag) and NautilusLog to deliver the IHM service. Many shipowners and operators have yet to decide on IHM service providers, but the KR partnership is well established with plans for future projects already underway and many new ideas to benefit customers in development, the class society said.
Sebastian Völchner, NSC Project Manager, said: "We are very satisfied that we have found the right partners following an intensive tendering process. We appreciate the value offered by KR, HMI GbR (QSU & exag) and NautilusLog GmbH, as they work together as a consortium, to offer a complete comprehensive service package as one team."
Michael Suhr, KR’s technical and commercial director for North Europe, added: "KR is pleased to offer its customers this technical solution which has been developed at the best competitive price for the market. The experience and expertise of our partners in this field, combined with KR's established expert global network will allow us to offer excellent business synergies to our shipowner and shipmanager customers."
Frank Schneider, Managing Director of HMI GbR (QSU & exag), added: "We are happy to be working with KR to provide this specialist service in direct response to increasing demand from industry as the entry into force date gets closer. We anticipate that demand will outstrip supply over the next year or so, creating a 'bottleneck' simply because there are a limited number of HAZMAT experts and specialist laboratories providing this service."
An IHM report will be linked to the entire lifespan of the vessel, eventually covering the building stage, its operational stage and the recycling stage.