Swire Shipping's strong reputation and presence close to our key customers in the Pacific Ocean and our renewed, eco-efficient and flexible liner fleet, allowed us to react nimbly to trade flow volatility.
In a major commercial expansion, Swire Bulk completed the acquisition of the Bulk Shipping Division of Hamburg Süd in April 2019 which accelerated its expansion into the Ultramax sector. This acquisition was consistent with the strategy to focus on modern fuel-efficient vessels that allow the business to continue to deliver environmentally responsible market-leading bulk solutions. Operating this modern fuel-efficient fleet has allowed Swire Bulk to transition smoothly through the implementation of the new IMO regulations on the first day of 2020 requiring the use of fuel oil with significantly reduced Sulphur content, whilst retaining our competitive advantage.
Continuing the organic expansion of Swire Bulk's capabilities, eight Oshima-designed 37k DWT vessels and two Hakodate-designed 34k DWT vessels were constructed in Japan in 2019. These are scheduled for delivery in 2020 and 2021. On the liner side, Swire Shipping is constructing eight 2,450 and 2,750 TEU container ships in 2019 with plans to launch the first of these in 2020. These newbuldings represent a generational investment in the largest and most environmentally friendly vessels in the region, as well as demonstrate our long-term commitment to our key stakeholder communities in the Asia Pacific region.
This material investment is testament to our confidence in the future of world trade, amidst an increasingly Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous (VUCA) world. We have experienced many challenges and major geopolitical upheavals in our 148-year history and we know there will more. However we have always faced our challenges with strength and resoluteness. We believe we have the tight management control and nimbleness to handle these and operate a sustainable business for the many decades to come.
As the new vessels enter service, we continue to retire our older vessels. We finished recycling one vessel, completed another and started recycling a third older vessel during 2019 in Alang at Hong Kong Convention for the Safe and Environmentally Sound Recycling of Ships (HKC)-compliant yards. The complete recycling of all three vessels involved a total of 93,664 manhours. I am very proud to report that these were undertaken safely; with zero injuries to any workers. There was also zero escape of toxic substances to the environment. In fact, 28,313 tonnes of material from the three vessels was sold for recycling into steel, reused as is, or upcycled, representing 99.23% of the total tonnage arriving for recycling. This is a world-leading example of a sustainable, closed-loop economic business process cycle.
CNCo is committed to having a positive impact on all the communities and the environment that we impact. We are passionate about decarbonisation and reducing plastic waste, as well as other sustainability issues relating to Oceans of the World.
To start on our journey in decarbonisation, CNCo joined the Getting to Zero Coalition in September 2019. The group is a widely representative coalition of some 250 members seeking to curb the emissions from shipping in line with the IMO Initial Strategy emissions' reduction target of 50% by 2050. To reach this goal and to make the transition to full decarbonisation possible, commercially viable zero emission vessels must start entering the global fleet by 2030, and radically scaling up through the 2030s and 2040s.
In the environmental area, our innovative and world-leading Moana Taka Partnership (MTP) expanded to move over 610 tonnes of waste streams in 50 TEUs. This included plastic, paper, scrap metal, glass and waste oil, from places where it shouldn't be sitting around in the Pacific Islands to places where it can be responsibly and environmentally recycled, generally at the Pacific Rim. We are hoping to continue to grow the MTP cargo throughput, and expand the scope going forwards. We will report on this in our next report, for the calendar year 2020.
Safety excellence remains our top priority and is critical to our being sustainable. Ensuring workplace safety both on board and in our offices is a fundamental requirement for all our managers and employees. CNCo continued working with the Danish safety consultancy firm, Green-Jakobsen, on enhancing our approach to safety. Following the Zero Harm campaign launched in 2018, Safety Delta™ was introduced in 2019. Regrettably we had eight LTIs throughout the year. In 2020 we have continued to emphasise to all our employees and contractors that safety is our #1 priority and must also be theirs. A number of office safety campaigns were developed and rolled out in our onshore offices globally.
We are committed to having a positive impact on the people, environment and communities that we touch, and strive to be a global and sectoral leader in sustainability. CNCo is proud to report its full performance transparently and in this independently audited report in all the areas covered by the Social Responsibility Standard: ISO 26000:2015. These are reported under the broad headings of 'Safety', 'Our Environment', 'Our People' and 'Our Communities' throughout this report.
James Woodrow
Managing Director
