The Japanese shipping group Mitsui O.S.K. Lines (MOL) has announced today that it has agreed with its compatriot Electric Power Development Co. (J-Power) the installation of the Wind Challenger wind propulsion system on the coal ship Kurotakisan Maru transporting coal to power plants of the J-Power energy group. Installation on the ship, which has a gross tonnage of 90 thousand tons and is long 235 meters and 38 meters wide, will take place in the second half of the 2025

This is the first installation on a ship currently in operation service of the Wind Challenger, the system of telescopic rigid sails designed by a group of companies and entities including MOL and Oshima Shipbuilding Co., a shipbuilding company that has built the Kurotakisan Maru delivered at the end of 2021 to the MOL group ( of 3 October 2019). It is expected that the use of the Wind Challenger reduce greenhouse gas emissions by around 5% during a travel between Japan and Australia and about 8% during a travel between Japan and the west coast of North America compared to a conventional vessel of the same type.

The Kurotakisan Maru will be the second ship MOL coal mining machine equipped with Wind Challenger, a system that is already operational on the newly built Shofu Maru ship used on behalf of Tohoku Electric Power Co. MOL announced whereas in the approximately 18 months after the delivery of the Shofu Maru, occurred in October 2022, the Wind Challenger sail reduced the daily fuel consumption of the ship up to 17% and on average between 5% and 8% for each trip.