the cut in shipping's fuel emissions intensity that EU rules require by 2050, running alongside a near-identical mandate already in force for aviation.

Fuel decarbonisation is landing on airlines and cruise lines at the same time, in almost the same shape. Worth understanding, wherever you sit in the chain.

Fuel decarbonisation doesn't come up much in day to day buyer conversations, whether the buyer sits at an airline or a cruise line. It sits one level up, in the operator's own public commitments and cost base, rather than in the supplier meetings that fill our diaries. But aviation and shipping are now working through near-identical regulatory playbooks at the same time, and it's quietly become one of the biggest cost lines either industry is carrying toward net zero. Worth a few minutes of anyone's time in travel retail, buyer or supplier, in the air or at sea.

What's driving this

The EU's ReFuelEU Aviation regulation requires airlines uplifting fuel at EU airports to blend in a minimum of 2% Sustainable Aviation Fuel from 2025, rising in stages to 70% by 2050. SAF currently costs several times more to produce than conventional jet fuel, and that cost inevitably works its way back through the business.

Shipping is on a strikingly similar path. The IMO's 2023 GHG Strategy commits international shipping to net zero by around 2050, with checkpoints of 20 to 30% by 2030 and 70 to 80% by 2040 against 2008 levels. In the EU, FuelEU Maritime turns that into a hard number cruise operators must hit: a 2% cut in fuel emissions intensity from 2025, rising to 6% by 2030 and 80% by 2050. Two different regulators, two different fuel types, the same shape of mandate landing on two different sectors of the same industry at the same time.

The honest picture is that neither of these has landed directly in buyer conversations yet. They show up in airline and cruise line sustainability reports and investor calls, but most travel retail buyers aren't yet connecting the fuel bill their operator is absorbing to the supplier relationships sitting on their own desk. I think that's going to change, and it applies just as much to a cruise line working through FuelEU Maritime as it does to an airline working through ReFuelEU. The window between a cost pressure appearing on an operator's balance sheet and it being felt across the supply chain usually closes faster than people expect.

Travel retail brands more broadly are starting to link their own carbon claims to SAF certificates or equivalent maritime fuel credits, effectively buying into their customer's decarbonisation directly. It's a reasonable thing to do, and I understand why some suppliers are exploring it. It's just not the route Bitmore has taken, and I think that's worth explaining honestly rather than skating past, for airline and cruise buyers alike.

I don't have a pitch to make on fuel decarbonisation itself, aviation or maritime. But if you'd like to talk through how Bitmore approaches carbon offsetting, or how a certified, carbon neutral supplier could feed into your own sustainability reporting, I'm happy to talk it through. No agenda, just a straightforward conversation.

That's it for this edition. Short on solutions, long on honesty, I hope.

A bit more info, as always.

Adam

Commercial Director · Bitmore · adam@bitmore.co.uk