Emirates Global Aluminium ships bauxite shipment using LNG-fuelled vessel

Emirates Global Aluminium (EGA) announced on August 5 the world’s first bauxite cargo shipment using a LNG-fuelled vessel. The shipment, transported in a Capesize ship, carried bauxite mined by EGA’s subsidiary Guinea Alumina Corporation to a customer in China.

LNG-fuelled ships can achieve up to 28% lower greenhouse gas emissions on a tank-to-wake basis compared to vessels using traditional marine bunker fuel, according to SEA-LNG, a multi-sector industry coalition. The global shipping industry as a whole was responsible for over two per cent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions in 2022, according to the International Energy Agency.

The bauxite shipment was aboard the Ubuntu Empathy, an LNG dual-fuelled vessel operated by Anglo American and chartered by EGA. The vessel is part of Anglo American’s fleet of 10 lower-emission LNG dual-fuelled vessels.

Capesize vessels are among the largest bulk cargo carriers in the world, measuring up to 300 m in length—the equivalent of two football fields—and 50 m in width. These vessels can carry approximately 180,000 tonnes of bauxite ore.

EGA primarily uses Capesize vessels to ship bauxite ore from the Republic of Guinea to its alumina refinery in Abu Dhabi and to third-party customers worldwide. Bauxite is the ore from which aluminium is derived.

EGA was the first aluminium producer and the first Middle Eastern company to join the global shipping and maritime sustainability initiative, the Sea Cargo Charter, in 2023.

In 2022, EGA signed an agreement with one of its shipping partners, Japan's K Line, to develop and implement new marine decarbonisation technologies suitable for EGA’s bulk cargo shipping routes in the eastern Atlantic Ocean, Mediterranean Sea, and Indian Ocean.