Re-Rope Circular Program

Introducing Re-Rope

Our circular rope service

We help ship owners and operators close the loop on sustainability. Our innovative take-back program collects end-of-life mooring ropes from vessels and ensures they are responsibly processed and given a new lifecycle, reducing landfill and incineration. We provide documentation for ESG reporting and compliance, supporting your commitment to a circular economy. Starting with operations in Singapore before a global scale-up, this service is designed to make sustainable rope disposal simple, transparent, and impactful.

From impact study to concrete pilot

Wilhelmsen Ship Service teamed up with empower.eco to undertake a study to track the environmental impact of mooring ropes from raw materials usage and the production process, to rope handling onboard vessels and end of life.

Based on the results, we established a Circular Rope pilot project whose core purpose is to provide transparent and objective information to vessels and rope manufacturers that can be used to extend the lifetime of mooring ropes.

The Circular Rope project has been conducted together with 10 Wallenius Wilhelmsen vessels, two management companies, our internal mooring ropes team and the Timm Ropes by Wilhelmsen manufacturing plant in Slovakia. It involved depositing retired mooring ropes in the port of Bremerhaven for onward transport to our factory for analysis. The resulting data will be shared with stakeholders and material from the ropes tested in new applications specifically avoiding any energy-intensive mechanical recycling processes.

Collaboration is key

For the project to succeed it is essential to nurture and grow collaborative partnerships both within shipping and across other industries.

Among other initiatives, we are participating in the GloLitter Partnerships project run by the UN Global Compact and International Maritime Organization (IMO), and we are active members of industry associations Eurocord and The Cordage Institute, which represent most of the rope industry, as well as the Marine Recycling Cluster in Norway.

We will continue to reach out to potential partners within and outside rope manufacturing in order to secure new life for the materials in our products.