Nippon Paint Marine’s FASTAR Antifouling Earmarked for COSCO Shipping VLCC Fleet

COSCO Shipping has indicated it will coat its entire fleet of VLCCs with Nippon Paint Marine’s new antifouling system FASTAR once initial applications have been evaluated.

The hulls of the passenger ferry COSCO Star and the 56,000dwt bulk carrier Xin Liu Lin Hai will each be coated with the game-changing antifouling at drydockings scheduled later this year.

COSCO Star will dock at the COSCO Shanghai Dockyard in February for a FASTAR XI application, with the bulker currently scheduled to take the FASTAR® I version in May, at the COSCO Guangzhou Dockyard.

The shipowner selected the novel nano resin containing paint – introduced to the market early last year – to help vessels meet the Energy Efficiency Existing Ship Index (EEXI) requirements. The amendment to MARPOL Annex VI, which requires all vessels above 400gt to measure their energy efficiency, enters into force in January 2023.

Jun Ye, M & R sales director, Nippon Paint Marine (China), said: “COSCO Shipping has a long history of applying Nippon Paint Marine antifouling to the hulls of its vessels as a way of improving propulsion efficiency and reducing emissions. Once the shipowner has verified the precise, predictable performance of FASTAR on these two vessels, more vessels are expected to take advantage of this revolutionary coating system.”

According to Nippon Paint Marine, despite some market retraction last year, orders for the new coating increased steadily with the 135,000 litres of the coating having been applied to hulls totalling 4.2Mdwt.

FASTAR is a self-polishing antifouling paint that incorporates a unique nano-domain resin structure designed to minimise the effect that seawater temperatures, vessel speeds and other external factors have on coating performance.

Nippon Paint Marine’s 4th generation antifouling system is available in two main versions – FASTAR I and FASTAR XI – of which the latter incorporates the company’s patented hydrogel technology.