Antoon van Coillie

Antoon is a director of Zulu Associates, an Anglo Belgian shipping company. Before joining the inland waterway and marine industries, he acquired a wide experience in different capacities within the construction and financial industries. He founded Blue Line Logistics in 2011, conceiving and developing the Pallet Shuttle Barge (aka ZULU) concept for moving palletized goods on inland waterways. In 2016, motivated by the climate crisis, he initiated the development of zero-emission dry bulk and container vessels for inland and short-sea freight using autonomous operation as an economic enabler of alternative propulsion systems. In 2020 he sold his stake in Blue Line Logistics to concentrate exclusively on zero-emission innovations. Zulu Associates is also a partner in the AUTOSHIP consortium, which will operate a demonstrator of autonomous operation on inland waterways in 2022. It also provides the platform for the autonomous mooring of inland barges using magnetic pads in the Hull2Hull consortium.

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Presentation

Realising competitive zero emission inland shipping

To realise a real transition to zero emission shipping, the implementation of alternative propulsion, (ie non fossil fuel) needs to be economically competitive versus existing fossil fueled operations. This is possible through rethinking radically the building, the operations and the design of the vessels. The presentation shows how Zulu Associates is implementing this with its innovative X barge aided by the increasing costs of fossil fuel through ETS and decreasing costs of alternative power systems provided by batteries.