George Economou is installing exhaust gas cleaning systems on almost his entire fleet, in what amounts to an overall $350m investment in the technology.

His shipping group decided about nine months ago to place the scrubbers in all but two of its vessels, the owner revealed in an opinion piece published in TradeWinds this week.

“This will cost our group in excess of $350m,” Economou said in the article, in which he takes a swipe at regulators for mismanaging the transition to low-sulphur fuels in ways that have divided the shipping community and thrown it into disarray.