Ardmore Shipping Announces Formation of Sustainability Committee
Back to newsAfter a recent Board meeting, Ardmore Shipping announced that its Board of Directors had formed a Sustainability Committee to oversee and advise on all matters related to corporate sustainability, including environmental, social and energy transition matters.
The formation of the Sustainability Committee is aimed at ensuring that Ardmore’s business strategies and activities prioritize critical ESG matters which are expected to have significant, long-term impacts on the company’s performance and on the product and chemical tanker industry as a whole.
The Sustainability Committee will be chaired by Dr. Kirsi Tikka, along with members Mats Berglund and Helen Tveitan de Jong. Kirsi Tikka has a particular depth of experience relating to this area as a senior advisor to the shipping industry on issues related to tanker performance measurement and optimization, a professor of naval architecture, a member of the US National Academy of Engineering, and a former Executive Vice President of the American Bureau of Shipping.
“Today, these aspects of our business are in fact highly technical in nature – whether we are talking about the energy transition, future fuels, efficiency-driven carbon reduction, diversity and inclusion, diversity at sea, or broader regulatory developments,” said Anthony Gurnee, Ardmore’s CEO. “We are extremely fortunate to have such an experienced, well-educated and talented group of directors, all with very deep shipping backgrounds, to assist on these matters. Collectively, these individuals will help us to maintain our pace of innovation, so that Ardmore can remain a frontrunner, and drive tangible progress in moving our industry towards its goals.”
Commenting on the new committee, Curtis McWilliams, Chair of the Board of Ardmore, said, “Sustainability informs everything that we do at Ardmore, and aligns with our long-term business objectives – from top-level strategy, to the ways that we measure and pursue day-to-day performance.
“Ardmore’s early and outspoken commitment to the principles of sustainability once marked us as an outlier in our industry. Now, however, our partners, customers, lenders, investors, and Ardmore team members regularly cite our sincere and active commitment to sustainability as one of the most important factors that they consider in choosing to work with Ardmore. In recognition of the increasingly consequential discourse around sustainability, ESG, and the energy transition, we have made the decision to formalize the Board’s commitment to these issues and to ensure Ardmore’s continued leadership in this regard.”
Chair of the Sustainability Committee, Kirsi Tikka, said, “There are few areas of the economy where sustainability and the energy transition have such profound implications as for the shipping industry and the product/chemical tanker sectors in particular. From new regulations requiring greater fuel efficiency and the evolving mix of refined products and chemicals cargoes that we carry, to the makeup and strategic priorities of our global customer base and their end-consumers’ drive toward decarbonization, sustainability impacts what we do, how we do it, and why we do it. By continually innovating technologically, actively implementing ESG best practices, and ensuring that we are positioned to carry the cargoes of the future, we are doing our part to move our industry forward and to maintain Ardmore’s position at the forefront of that progress.”
Learn more about Ardmore Shipping’s sustainability ambitions and initiatives in the most recent Progress Report: https://ardmoreshipping.com/about/progress/