Boskalis Sustainability Report 2020

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Ambition Preventing and reducing marine pollution of all kinds through our marine salvage business Scope Marine Salvage (emergency response services, environmental services and wreck removal) Target To prevent any oil (products), pollutants and/or hazardous cargo from salvaged vessels entering the marine and coastal environment 2020 Performance ‚ These activities accounted for 7% of our Group revenue ‚ See project examples on page 37 Our salvage operations strive to protect vessels in distress and their cargo and to avert environmental damage to the marine environment. In this way the pollution prevention activities of our Salvage business contribute toward delivery of SDG Goal 14, Life Below Water. We provide marine salvage and wreck removal services for vessels all over the world. Operating from four strategic locations along international shipping routes – Houston, Cape Town, Rotterdam and Singapore, we can spring into action to help vessels in distress whenever, and wherever, we are needed. Vessels in distress or other damaged fixed or floating structures such as offshore platforms, may present an environmental hazard as well as an obstruction for other vessels. On average, our Emergency Response and Wreck Removal teams are called out to around 50 incidents a year. Over the last number of years, Salvage has on average had one case every five days and has prevented an annual average of nearly 400,000 tons of (refined) oil products and approximately 800,000 tons of hazardous cargo from spilling into our oceans and seas. Wrecked or damaged ships can release oil, lubricants or other potentially harmful substances into the marine environment. We actively support ship owners, insurance companies, terminal operators and classification societies to help prevent incidents as far as possible. When an incident does occur we aim to minimize spill damage by removing or containing the pollutants. We do this by providing emergency towing assistance, re-floating grounded vessels and removing polluting cargoes or fuel. Our salvage plans include steps, actions and alternatives on the most effective measures to avert damage to the vessel, its cargo and the environment. Due to the dynamics of continuously changing circumstances and time pressures inherent to salvage operations, such plans are often founded on the best available information at hand and expected developments. Authorities or the client often have the ultimate authority and decision-making power on which subsequent action is pursued.

In addition, together with our R&D department we are looking into innovations that will speed up pollution recovery and wreck removal to minimize environmental damage. These include jet packs and drones, which were recently successfully employed during a salvage operation in Mauritius. Remote assistance has numerous benefits including the safety of our own staff and a faster response time improving our ability to succeed in our salvage efforts. Our advanced technology and expertise can remove hazardous substances such as heavy fuel oil from wrecks and we boast a longstanding successful track record in salvaging vessels and platforms under challenging circumstances. We are also conducting R&D to prepare for a future when vessels are expected to run on increasingly low-carbon fuel. This requires a different approach towards salvage operations, including altered equipment and new protocols to govern it. We can apply complex interventions, such as removing potentially polluting cargoes and bunker fuel from casualties and wrecks at great depth. We are experts at 'hot tapping’ to gain access to pollutants and to cleanly and safely remove them by drilling into the vessel from outside the hull. We can also use probes to extract pollutants that might need heating to liquefy them in the cold surroundings of the deep ocean. We are a member of the International Salvage Union and the P&I (Protection and Indemnity) organization; in both arenas we leverage our substantial knowledge in the areas of both salvage operations and marine biodiversity to raise the issue of environmental damage higher up the agenda.

SUSTAINABILITY REPORT 2020 – BOSKALIS