Sulphur emission control areas and transport strategies -the case of Sweden and the forest industry

Background and purpose The International Maritime Organisation's (IMO) decision to lower the allowable amount of sulphur content in marine fuels to 0.1 % in the so-called Emission Control Areas (ECAs) beginning in 2015 has outraged the Swedish forest industry. The seas around Sweden are included in the ECA and achieving the new sulphur directive requires shipowners to take actions that will increase the cost of transporting goods by ship from Sweden. Swedish forest industry exports are transported mostly by ship and there is a possibility that the forest industry will shift freight from sea to land transport because of the sulphur directive. How greatly the transport costs differ between different transportation options is affected by several uncertainties such as price trends for fuel. Other restrictions for shipping, such as nitrogen oxide emissions and ballast water treatment, are also expected to become stricter in the future. The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of the sulphur directive and associated uncertainties on the Swedish forest industry, its transport system structure, and its logistics strategies. Results and conclusions Previous studies in the field have forecast that the freight will be transferred to land because of the sulphur directive. Our results also show that companies will transfer the cargo to land transport. The transfer will be greater the further south in the country production facilities are located. Goods that previously were shipped from ports on the Swedish east coast will instead be shipped more frequently from ports on the west coast to reduce transport time within the ECA region. Furthermore, the results show that firms do not sign agreements with shipping lines that extend beyond the year 2015, but instead write long, flexible agreements with rail operators, enabling an increase in freight strategy to address the sulphur directive. In this way, they have created the capacity to transform the transport structure.