The Baltic Sea’s first green freight corridor is here

Finnish shipping company Viking Line, compatriot road transportation company Scandic Trans and food business operator Orkla Suomi have launched a biofuel-powered scheduled freight service, opening the Baltic Sea’s first green freight corridor.

As a result, transport emissions along the green freight corridor that stretches from Fågelmara, Sweden to Turku, Finland, are 90% lower than previously.

Felix ketchup, produced by the Orkla Group in Fågelmara, began to be shipped to Finland using green biofuel in July. The transport chain starts at the biggest ketchup factory in the Nordic region, with Scandic Trans lorries from Korsholm driving to Viking Line’s terminal in Stadsgården, Stockholm. The lorries then cross the Archipelago Sea on the climate-smart Viking Glory and Viking Grace and deliver their load to Orkla’s logistics centre in Turku.

Scandic Trans refuels its lorries with biofuel produced from hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO), while Viking Line buys liquefied biogas (LBG) made from organic waste from Gasum to cover fuel use during transport.

“At Orkla’s companies, large volumes of food products are transported between the Nordic countries. The biogas project on this bustling route is one step in our sustainability journey. Our goal is to cut our greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 compared to 2016. Reducing our environmental impact is part of our day-to-day development work. So it was fantastic how easy it was for us as a cargo customer to make the switch to this green maritime corridor,” Mauri Suuronen, Planning and Logistics Manager at Orkla Suomi, commented.

For each shipment, carbon dioxide emissions are reduced from 1,512 kilogrammes to 102 kilogrammes. That means an annual decrease in emissions of about 190 tonnes.

“Lowering emissions has long been a key issue for road transport, so we have focused on introducing HVO biofuel. Now that it is also possible to use biofuel in the maritime part of the transport chain, the emissions reduction is revolutionary. And the most important thing is that biofuel can be used on a large scale, and the environmental impact can be reported for each transport mode. The transport sector’s reputation is not the best on environmental issues, so it is important to show that sustainable alternatives are available,” Mikael Löfqvist, CEO of the transport company Scandic Trans, said.

Viking Glory and Viking Grace currently operate mostly on liquefied natural gas (LNG), but they were built from the very start to run on the bio and synthetic fuels of the future.

“We have invested a total of 450 million euros in our climate-smart vessels. As a result, we have now successfully launched scheduled freight service using biofuel in partnership with Orkla Suomi and Scandic Trans. This is a fantastic and important demonstration of the power of cooperation on sustainability measures – this requires supply and demand, and naturally a shared willingness to take climate-smart actions. This green freight corridor has attracted enormous interest across the Nordic region, and it is only a matter of time before more companies sign up,” Harri Tamminen, Freight Director at Viking Line, pointed out.

For a year now, Viking Line has offered its passengers and conference customers the possibility of buying biogas equivalent to the amount used on their journey, thus reducing emissions from their travel by 90%. This year, the company celebrated Baltic Sea Day by purchasing biofuel used on the Turku route for an entire week.