The International Convention for the Control and Management of Ships’ Ballast Water and Sediments was adopted in February 2004 and it was ratified by a sufficient number of countries in September 2016. The most important part of the Convention is Regulation D-2. One way to meet D-2 is to retrofit Ballast Water Treatment Systems (BWTS) on existing ships and their fitting on newbuildings. The market consists of the following stakeholders: shipowners, equipment manufacturers, shipyards, recognized organizations, laboratories for testing the efficacy of the BWTS and coastal countries’ administrations in charge for implementing Convention standards. In order to enable enough time to comply with the Convention, shipowners are granted maximum 5 year period, i.e. system retrofitting is connected to the first renewal of the International Oil Pollution Prevention certificate after September 2017. Some shipowners will postpone retrofitting for five years since they will renew IOPP certificates in advance, which is approved by many flag States and stated in their circular letters. More than 60 systems received flag State type approvals, but only few systems are approved by United States Maritime Administration (MARAD). That is one of the reasons why most of the shipowners are still waiting with planning and retrofitting, which leads to requests for more postponement. However, many manufacturers claim that they will be ready for increased demand for BWTS and will cope with and try to satisfy market demand by hiring additional work force, by expanding existing manufacturing facilities and maintain good cooperation with shipyards.
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