Mitsubishi Shipbuilding, Imabari Shipbuilding, K Line, MOL, NYK, JMU and NSY have joined forces to create a unified standard design framework for liquefied CO2 carriers and next-generation vessels powered by greener fuels such as ammonia.
The framework is intended to streamline the early stages of ship development, enhance technical consistency and enable broader collaboration across Japan’s shipbuilding sector.
Under the agreement, MILES Co., formerly MI LNG Company, will act as the central platform responsible for producing the initial ship designs. These shared designs will then serve as the basis for functional and production design work at multiple shipyards across Japan.
By establishing common technical foundations, the companies aim to speed up development timelines, reduce duplication of engineering effort and allow domestic shipyards to compete more effectively on the global stage.
The initiative represents one of the most coordinated industry efforts to date to strengthen Japan’s position in emerging markets for low-carbon maritime transport. LCO2 carriers are expected to play a key role in future carbon capture, utilisation and storage value chains, while ammonia-fuelled ships are widely viewed as a major pathway toward meeting international decarbonisation targets. Standardising the initial design process is seen as essential for scaling these technologies efficiently.
K Line, MOL and NYK have committed investment to MILES to boost the rollout of the framework and support the construction of ships at multiple shipyards nationwide. JMU and NSY have also agreed to invest, reinforcing the collective effort to distribute MILES’s standard specifications across the domestic industry.
