Ocean Transportation

Sustainability

Read our latest decarbonization report:

Progressing through currents of change

Cargill Ocean Transportation | Decarbonization Update 2024

Cargill Ocean Transportation Report Image

Making ocean shipping more sustainable is core to our purpose as a business. More than 80% of international trade by volume is moved by sea, which means ocean shipping is the backbone of the global economy. It’s also already one of the most efficient forms of moving goods in terms of emissions per tonne of product, yet we know we can keep improving it. Every day and in everything we do, we are working to make shipping safer and more responsible with less impact on the environment – across both our operations and the wider maritime industry.

Lowering Scope 3 emissions from ocean shipping

Since 2017, we’ve made considerable progress, challenging the status quo and taking bold action to help lead the energy transformation across our industry.

Every day, we are moving forward:

Collaborating with customers to help them understand their carbon footprints and ways to reduce Scope 3 emissions
Working with shipowners to upgrade vessels through physical and digital optimization, making them more energy efficient while also improving maritime safety
Working across a broad coalition of partners to pool the best thinking and catalyze progress towards a sustainable future for shipping
Playing an active role in exploring the market mechanisms that will incentivize steady decarbonization without disrupting global trade flows
Gathering important logistics learnings from a variety of wind propulsion technologies installed on our chartered vessels
Finding new ways to bring scale to biofuels and non-conventional fuels

The International Maritime Organization (IMO) agreement in April to a Net-Zero framework—that includes greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions intensity targets and financial penalties for exceeding them—is a historic milestone. We are encouraged by this forward momentum.

We also intend to continue leading. As the industry is required to take small and large steps along the way, we will no doubt experience some discomfort as we tackle this monumental task extending over the coming decades. It will require courage to have hard conversations about what’s possible and what we need to make possible. No matter where you are in solving your company’s equation for decarbonization, we at Cargill Ocean Transportation want to continue the conversation with you.

How we are reducing emissions today

Reducing emissions across the shipping industry will take decades, but we can already make headway toward our goals by using solutions that are available today.

“

If we’re smart about working together across our industry, we can start reducing fuel usage, costs and carbon emissions right away.

Cargill Ocean Transportation is leading the way with innovative wind-assisted propulsion, green methanol fuel and sustainable biofuels. And we are pioneering a broad range of other solutions with our partners. Here are some examples:

Aligning on climate goals

Aligning on climate goals:

The Sea Cargo Charter (SCC) brings together the world’s largest charterers of cargo ships with the aim of reducing the climate impact of the shipping industry. We played a leading role in the SCC’s founding in 2020. The organization provides a transparent, shared disclosure framework, based on a linear decarbonization trajectory aligned with the IMO’s revised strategy of reducing shipping’s greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by around 2050. Using the SCC’s published methodology, members assess their fleets’ carbon intensity annually against the SCC benchmark trajectory.

Advancing a range of solutions

Advancing a range of solutions:

We invested in ZeroNorth, a provider of voyage, vessel and bunker optimization software, to accelerate the use of digital solutions that decarbonize shipping. In 2024, all our time-chartered voyages used ZeroNorth’s technology, which is helping ZeroNorth refine its models and benefiting other users of the platform as well. We also work closely with ship owners and other key stakeholders to invest in and pilot new technologies and fuels. This includes everything from installing energy-saving devices on our time-chartered vessels to experimenting with wind-assisted propulsion to ordering ships that run on methanol.

Improving maritime safety

We are deeply committed to sending our own employees home safe every day. And although we do not employ the crews on our chartered ships, we are concerned for their physical and psychological welfare, as well as other seafarers across the industry. We are taking action to drive improvements throughout ocean shipping.

We are a longtime shareholder in RightShip, which focuses on safety, sustainability and socially responsible practices. We strive to always select vessels for our time-charter fleet that are scored in RightShip’s highest categories for safety. We also lead efforts with the RightShip coalition to advocate more broadly for policies that protect seafarers’ physical and mental well-being.

We carefully select our shipowner partners and operators with safety as the highest priority. We do not tolerate non-compliance of Maritime Labor Convention regulations, and we expect all our partners to stand with us in prioritizing crew safety and well-being.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, we instituted a practice of tracking how long crews have been aboard our chartered ships and took steps to switch out crews whose time aboard was above the 11-month standard. And we were a founding signatory of the Neptune Declaration on Seafarer Wellbeing and Crew Change, leading efforts for the industry and governments to address this issue.
We support Human Rights at Sea, a non-profit organization with a global mission to end human rights abuses at sea.
We worked with DNV Maritime, The Seafarers’ Charity and Mission to Seafarers to fund the development of a free-to-download app that makes it easier for seafarers to access services to improve their welfare and mental health, especially while at sea.

Diversity in maritime shipping

In addition to the commitments to diversity, equity and inclusion in our own workforce, we advocate for greater diversity in the maritime industry. This includes work to raise gender create pathways forward for women in maritime shipping.

We are active members of industry associations like the Women’s International Shipping & Trading Association.
In 2017, we co-signed the All Aboard Alliance, an initiative of the Global Maritime Forum, which brings together senior industry leaders to drive progress toward a more diverse, equitable and inclusive maritime industry.
We are one of several companies taking part in the Diversity@Sea pilot to make life at sea more inclusive and attractive to all seafarers. We are participating in the pilot with Neda Maritime using the vessel Mv. Chloe.

Recognition of our work

We are proud of our team’s dedication to driving sustainability across ocean shipping. Here are some recent awards that acknowledge that work.

In January 2024, Cargill was recognized for R&D leadership with a 2024 Business Intelligence Group (BIG) Innovation Award. The product category was awarded to Cargill’s and BAR Technology’s groundbreaking WindWings^® sails.
In October 2022, Cargill Ocean Transportation received the NAMEPA Marine Environment Protection award for our contribution to preserving the marine environment.
In September 2022, Cargill Ocean Transportation President Jan Dieleman received the 2022 Capital Link Maritime Sustainability Award for his contribution to the industry’s sustainability.

Our partnerships

Making maritime shipping more sustainable, safer and more diverse will be a monumental task extending over the coming decades. We are committed to helping lead the effort, but we know that no one organization can do it alone. Ship owners, ship builders, charterers, port operators, policymakers, NGOs and other stakeholders all have an important role to play.

That’s why we work across a broad coalition of partners to pool the best thinking and catalyze progress. This, combined with our internal efforts and our work directly with our customers and ship owners, will help keep us on the pathway toward a sustainable future for shipping.

Explore our progress through the years

Learn about Cargill Ocean Transportation’s decarbonization journey by exploring our annual decarbonization reports.