Paying the Piper

(Article originally published in Jan/Feb 2026 edition.)

The average merchant ship has a service life of 20-25 years, in some cases more. That's a long time to stay in compliance with all the rules that govern shipping, and owners know they have to set themselves up for success.

It's not enough to meet regulations on day one: Every ship system has to be supported throughout a lifetime of industrial service if it's going to satisfy inspectors on day 5,000. Without solid backing from the original equipment manufacturer (OEM), any complex system becomes difficult to maintain – a reality that's coming home to roost for owners who bought ballast water treatment systems (BWTSs) over the past few years.

FIT FOR THE LONG RUN

In the boom days of the ballast water treatment market when shipowners were rushing to meet the IMO deadline for installation, dozens of small suppliers and shipyards got into the business and marketed affordable new systems. At the time, established OEMs cautioned that there would be a wave of consolidation after this big surge died down and that many suppliers would have to exit the market – with implications for long-term aftersales support.

That has indeed turned out to be the case. Some OEMs have thrived. Others have folded. Some have quietly refocused on other products.

The net result is that many owners are already replacing treatment systems that no longer work, are no longer well-supported, or both. They have few other options as port state control (PSC) authorities are ramping up the stringency of their inspection regimes.

"A lot of vessel owners in the early stages chose systems that were cheap, designed by the shipyard, with filters that were not really useful in challenging water conditions," says Rudolph Mes, Senior Vice President of Operations at BWTS supplier Scienco-Fast. "It was more like, 'Let's go for the cheapest one.' Now you see a shift and more people are saying, 'Oh, we have the wrong system. We have to look for a replacement.'"

Common complaints include high maintenance, poor diagnostics, high usage of consumables and poor or slow performance in certain water conditions (excess silt, low temperature or low salinity). For compliance, it's no longer enough to carry a documented BWTS on board. In many ports, the system has to have a record of functionality and crew competency in order to pass muster, much like the ship's oily water separator.

TOUGHER INSPECTIONS

Last year, the Paris and Tokyo MoUs ran a concentrated inspection campaign targeting BWTS functionality, and many owners found out the hard way that their systems needed improvement.

"Shipowners are under growing pressure to demonstrate that their BWTS can operate reliably across different water qualities, trading patterns and ports and that crews are able to explain and defend system operation during inspection," says a spokesperson for leading OEM Alfa Laval. "Tolerance for recurring alarms, derated operation or informal workarounds has decreased significantly."

The new PSC emphasis on checking capability has resulted in a wave of BWTS-related deficiencies, detentions and follow-up inspections in some regions. For shipping, time is money, and an off-hire event because of a simple BWTS failure is a costly problem both in the short term (revenue) and the long term (customer relations).

A growing number of owners are opting to replace unreliable BWTS equipment, finding the expense of an early retrofit to be lower than the lifecycle cost of an unsupported system.

"In many cases, the technical problems they experience are manageable in isolation," says an Alfa Laval spokesperson, "but the lack of confidence that their BWTS supplier will remain engaged, resourced and accountable over the vessel's lifetime becomes the decisive factor." As a replacement, lots of owners are turning to the company's PureBallast 3 retrofit system, and so far Alfa Laval has completed more than 300 projects to remove another OEM's equipment and install its own.

PERFORMANCE TESTING & VALIDATION

For now, most PSC inspection regimes are still looking at records of compliance rather than performing lab tests on actual BWTS discharge water, but there are signs that this may change.

"Some inspection regimes are more stringent, and [with testing] they see that about 30 percent of the currently installed systems are not compliant," says Scienco-Fast's Mes. "So noncompliant water is being pumped over."

For owners, this raises another future-proofing question: Can their BWTS stand up to performance testing and, if so, can they easily demonstrate that the discharge water meets standards? Owners can check it with a lab testing service like SGS's marine services, but some BWTS suppliers offer real-time testing built right into the equipment.

For Scienco-Fast, this is a big selling point. Its InTank chlorination system finishes its work while under way, so the details of chemical treatment can be demonstrated to PSC officials even before water discharge begins. "You can pull out of the system a certificate of compliance that shows which tanks were treated, how long the chemicals were in the tanks, and authorities can see exactly what you've done with your water treatment," Mes says.

In the broader market, inadequate treatment is so common that some ports are looking at setting up dedicated ballast water reception facilities. Bio-UV, a leading BWTS OEM based in France, sees port-side treatment as a growth area for its business as inspection regimes intensify.

To serve this new market, it's partnered with biological monitoring company MicroWISE to build an integrated test-and-treat solution for shoreside ballast water disposal. The combined system gives an assessment of ballast water compliance in real time, at the point of treatment – allowing the port to remediate a ship's noncompliant ballast water without slowing down operations.

"Many ships are fitted with ballast-water systems that do not consistently perform under real operating conditions," says Maxime Dedeurwaerder, Business Unit Director for BIO-UV Group's maritime division. "As a result, the burden of compliance is shifting toward ports, which will need practical, scalable solutions to handle non-compliant discharges."

RETROFIT SKILLS

Many of these big refits have to happen in a shipyard, and yard days cost the owner money twice: once for the shipyard's expenses and once for the lost off-hire time. For OEMs and yards, that means getting vessels in and out fast is key to winning clients for refit work.

During the peak years of BWTS refits, Chinese shipyards reported a 48 percent jump in workload, and many regional yards like Turkey's Tuzla Shipyard and Estonia's BLRT made a name for themselves by doing fast, high-quality work. German water purification specialist Amollo lays out what it takes to compete for refit work, and it isn't easy. The space has to be cleared of existing systems and obstructions and prepared to receive the new equipment, sometimes while the ship is under way. All components must be factory-tested, then each piece has to be moved into the compartment through existing hatches and installed into tight spaces. This kind of work requires adaptability to fit the circumstances of the job.

In the cruise and naval markets, space is especially key. Many of these operators now want to retrofit their blackwater systems to treat their graywater too, says ACO Marine's Head of Sales, Chaitanya Shah. That goes beyond legal requirements, and handling that extra volume requires adding more capacity.

One solution is to buy a big treatment plant that can handle the largest anticipated peaks of graywater and blackwater production. A more creative alternative – and the one Shah recommends – is to convert an existing ballast or blackwater tank space into a holding tank that absorbs all the peak wastewater loads. Then you can install a smaller treatment system that draws down the tank at a constant rate.

The tank conversion requires input from the naval architect, the class society and the shipyard, "but we have made it work very well," says Shah. This saves money and space while allowing the customer to exceed treatment requirements.

WASTE DISPOSAL

Evac Group, one of the largest wastewater treatment suppliers, has another recommendation for cruise operators: carbonizing their messy organic solid waste into biochar. Its newly-developed HydroTreat system takes the ship's food waste and bio-sludge, heats it up to about 400 degrees Fahrenheit and pumps it out as sterilized charcoal.

The biochar can be dewatered and disposed of without further special handling, allowing the ship to handle its own waste under way, avoiding costly in-port sewage fees, over-the-side discharge or emissions-intensive incineration.

Carnival's TUI Cruises is installing the system on three new cruise ships currently under construction. "This is not just a ground-breaking innovation for the cruise industry, but for waste management in general," says Georgios Vagiannis, TUI Cruises' newbuild chief.

The opinions expressed herein are the author's and not necessarily those of The Maritime Executive.