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For a third consecutive year, Japan's NYK Line has received the highest rating on the Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC) Environmental Assessment Loan.

The Environmental Assessment Loan is an assessment provided by SMBC to customers, which includes a diagnosis of areas where the company’s activities can be improved from an environmental perspective. The assessment uses a standard created by SMBC and Japan Research Institute Ltd., and can be used when establishing loan conditions.

In this year’s SMBC assessment, NYK received high ratings for its environmental management, environmental business, the company’s approach to environmental preservation measures, and the company’s grasp of negative environmental impacts. In particular, the company’s environmental management was praised.

In a statement, NYK said it places environmental issues at the top of its corporate priorities. The company’s medium-term management plan, entitled 'More Than Shipping 2013', establishes a clear goal of increasing fuel efficiency by 10 percent by 2015 compared to 2010.

One of NYK's new environmental engineering technologies to improve fuel efficiency is an air-lubrication system featuring a blower that provides air to the vessel bottom, thus reducing friction between the vessel bottom and the sea. After this system was installed on two of the group's vessels and its benefit confirmed, an air-lubrication system using the vessel's scavenging air was additionally developed and installed on a new coal carrier delivered to NYK. This was the first time that a coal carrier anywhere in the world was equipped with such as system.

NYK has also decided to introduce an onboard broadband communication system on all its containerships with the aim of reducing CO2 emissions during ship operations. Moreover, the company has implemented its Innovative Bunker and Idle-time Saving (IBIS) project, which aims to achieve optimal economic ship operations by sharing between land and ships real-time information related to ship operations.

NYK says it is making use of the advancements and findings achieved through these projects to develop in areas that will allow the group to provide optimal service by type of vessel and shipping conditions.

NYK has also received ISO14001 certification for around 800 ships, domestic and foreign group companies, and chartering services. It has constructed a global environmental management system that tries to understand and disclose a wider array and more accurate environmental impact data - even if it is negative.

Moreover, NYK began reporting Scope 3* emissions from 2012, thus allowing the company to report the amount of emissions generated by all of NYK’s business activities.

In fact, NYK was the first shipping company to be certified by a third party for the company's collection, calculation, and reporting of Scope 3 emissions. The transparency of NYK's disclosures was recognized by the company’s inclusion in two major 2012 carbon leadership indices compiled by the Carbon Disclosure Project. NYK was the only company in the shipping and logistics industry to be included in these two indices.


* The GHG Protocol Corporate Standard classifies a company's GHG emissions into three 'scopes'. Scope 1 emissions are direct emissions from owned or controlled sources. Scope 2 emissions are indirect emissions from the generation of electricity, heating and cooling, or steam generated off-site but purchased by the company. Scope 3 emissions are all indirect emissions (not included in scope 2) that occur in related activity outside the company, such as raw materials procurement, manufacturing, waste disposal, employee travel and commuting, and business operations.