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Preliminary Analysis of Cost of Ballast Water Treatment Systems
December 22, 2009
2
Using each of six potential installation options
:
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New Build (U.S. and Asian Yard)
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Retrofit (U.S. and Asian Yard)
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Retrofit While Ship is in Service (U.S. and Asian Yard)
Summary of Results
Based on information from vendors and other sources, the range of average BWT equipment
purchase costs across all ship categories analyzed is $640,000 to $947,000; the range of average
installation costs for these systems is approximately $18,000 to $197,000; and, the range of
average annual fixed operating costs (e.g., for system maintenance) across these ship categories
is from approximately $9,000 to $18,000. For systems that require chemicals and other
consumables per ton of BW treated, the amount of BW treated becomes critical: For example,
the annual operating costs for systems requiring chemicals/consumables can range from about
$31,000 for smaller vessels to as high as $296,000 for VLCCs.
The significant range of costs in each category resulted from the fact that in this preliminary cost
analysis, we decided not to prejudge which BWT system would be suitable for each ship
type/size. This resulted in some cost estimates associated with unlikely combinations, such as
chemical treatment being used on VLCCs, Tankers, and Cape Sized Bulkers.
If we exclude combinations of ship type/size and BWT systems that technical experts have
identified as highly unlikely, then the typical estimated cost of purchasing and installing a BWT
system across all system types and ship categories is about $1 million. If these purchase and
installation costs are averaged over a 25-year system life, the total annual (undiscounted) costs
range from $50,000 or more for smaller vessels to $100,000 or more for larger vessels such as
VLCCs.
Caveats
The eight ship type/size categories used in this analysis are not comprehensive, but are assumed
to include most merchant ships that will be complying with IMO regulations by installing BWT
systems. Costs were estimated for a single “typical” ship within each of these eight categories,
but are not likely to reflect typical costs for some ships or ship groups within these categories.
All cost estimates presented here are very preliminary and although the range of error in these
cost estimates may be wide, they have no known biases up or down. They are suitable primarily
for general planning purposes, rather than for assessing BWT system costs for particular ships,
and will be used with global fleet size estimates in subsequent MERC papers to develop a
preliminary assessment of the potential economic value and expected pattern of development of
global BWT system markets.