On December 1st, seven companies within the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Group—Mitsubishi Shipbuilding, Imabari Shipbuilding, Kawasaki Kisen Kaisha, Mitsui O.S.K. Lines, Nippon Yusen Kaisha, Japan Marine United, and Nippon Shipyard—announced that they have signed a memorandum of understanding to establish a standard design scheme for advanced vessels such as liquefied CO2 (LCO2) carriers and new fuel vessels utilizing decarbonization technologies (such as ammonia fuel). The scheme involves MILES (formerly MI LNG Company) conducting development and basic design, with each domestic shipyard then carrying out functional and production design based on this common basic design, thereby efficiently advancing the development and initial design of these vessels.
The seven companies aim to develop and design internationally competitive vessels in collaboration with domestic shipyards through the establishment of a standard design scheme. They plan to expand the number of participating domestic shipyards and consider expanding the range of vessels covered depending on the business environment.
Kawasaki Kisen Kaisha, Mitsui O.S.K. Lines, and Nippon Yusen Kaisha have decided to invest in MILES to accelerate cross-industry collaboration in Japan and will work to promote shipbuilding at many domestic shipyards that utilize the standard design scheme.
Furthermore, Japan Marine United and Nippon Shipyard have decided to invest in MILES in order to deepen their collaboration with each other so that the standard designs provided by MILES can be widely utilized in the domestic shipbuilding industry, thereby enabling a strong resurgence of the international competitiveness of the Japanese shipbuilding industry.
