Company: CMDB
Filing Date: 2025-03-31
Form Type: 20FR12B
Source: 0001140361-25-011425
Chunk: 133

Company: Costamare Bulkers Holdings Ltd
Filing Date: 2025-03-31
Form: 20FR12B
Chunk 133
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 reduction from the 3.5% m/m global limit previously in place. Vessels must either be equipped with exhaust gas scrubbers, which allow the vessel to use the existing, less expensive, high sulphur content fuel, or have undertaken fuel system modification and tank cleaning, which allows the vessel to use more expensive, low sulphur fuel. Vessels that are not equipped with exhaust gas scrubbers cannot have high sulphur content fuel on board. We currently have exhaust gas scrubbers in eight of our vessels. Presently, 24 of the 53 vessels period chartered-in through our dry bulk operating platform (out of which three are vessels chartered-in from our owned fleet) are equipped with exhaust gas scrubbers. Vessels that do not have exhaust gas scrubbers installed are using low sulphur content fuel in compliance with applicable regulations.

Annex VI also provides for the establishment of special areas, known as Emission Control Areas (“ECAs”), where more stringent controls on sulphur and other emissions apply. Currently, the Baltic Sea area, the North Sea area, the Mediterranean Sea, certain coastal areas of North America (off of the United States and Canada) and the U.S. Caribbean Sea area (around Puerto Rico and the United States Virgin Islands) are designated as ECAs. The Mediterranean Sea became an ECA on May 1, 2024, and compliance obligations will begin May 1, 2025. The emissions restrictions of the Mediterranean ECA are the same as the other ECAs, mandating the use of fuel oil with a sulphur content not exceeding 0.10% or the use of an exhaust gas cleaning system. In October 2024, at MEPC 82, the IMO adopted amendments to Annex VI to designate the Canadian Arctic and Norwegian Sea as two new ECAs for nitrogen oxides, sulfur oxides and particulate matter. The amendments will enter into force on March 1, 2026. Additional ECAs may be established in the future.

IMO nitrous oxide (NO x ) Tier III requirements, the most demanding to date, took effect in North American and U.S. Caribbean ECAs in 2016 for vessels with a keel-laying date on or after January 1, 2016 and an engine output in excess of 130kW. For vessels constructed (keel-laying) on or after January 1, 2021 and operating in the Baltic Sea ECA or the North Sea ECA, any marine diesel engine