On September 24, mediterranean shipping company issued a notice on its official website on how to deal with the new environmental protection regulations in 2020.

 The notice said that in order to meet the requirements of the new environmental protection regulations, mediterranean shipping company's operating costs will be greatly increased. It is estimated that the ship modification and fuel supply modification will incur an additional cost of more than US $ 2 billion per year, so a new fuel surcharge standard will be introduced from January 2019.

 It is understood that the new standard will replace the existing fuel surcharge mechanism and will reflect the fuel prices of refueling ports around the world, as well as specific airline costs, such as transportation time, fuel efficiency and trade-related factors.

 mediterranean shipping company also said that improving the environmental protection of the container shipping industry is the common goal of liner shipping companies, shippers, freight forwarders, non-vessel public carriers, as well as the government, regulatory agencies and the public.

 On the same day, Dafei Group also announced its support for the use of fuel with sulfur content less than 0.5 %, and decided to use LNG power on nine 22000 TEU container ships delivered in 2020, while also ordering several desulfurization towers.

 Mathieu Fridberg, senior vice president of business and agency network of Dafei Group, said: " The implementation of the new environmental protection regulations reflects the significant progress of the shipping industry in environmental protection and will also affect every participant in the industry.  In order to achieve the goal of environmental protection, it is inevitable that we should examine the charging standard of fuel surcharge.  "

 However, neither company has published the specific details of the new fuel surcharge standard.

 In fact, last Monday Maersk Shipping released a statement on its website saying that a new fuel surcharge standard has been formulated to compensate for the high fuel cost and will be officially implemented on January 1, 2019.

 The new fuel surcharge for Maersk shipping involves two factors, namely, the fuel price calculated from the average fuel price of the world's major refueling ports, and trade factors reflecting the average fuel consumption of a certain route, such as sailing time, fuel efficiency, unbalanced cargo volume for round trip, etc.

 However, according to foreign media reports, some shippers have questioned the transparency of Maersk's new fuel surcharge and prefer the liner company to use the desulfurization tower instead of the low-sulfur oil, because the installation of the desulfurization tower is a one-time expense, which is better than paying the additional cost of the low-sulfur oil indefinitely.

 James Hookham, head of the Global Shippers' Forum, said he hoped Maersk could negotiate with customers to reconsider the standard of fuel surcharge.  A spokesman for Maersk said that he had actively engaged in dialogue with customers and the new standards were well received by customers.

 At present, many large liner companies have adjusted the fuel surcharge standard, and more companies may announce similar plans in the future.