The Drax Group, one of the world’s largest biomass companies, has signed a new transatlantic freight contract with Ultrabulk that runs to March 2031 and requires the carbon emissions from each wood pellet shipment bound for Drax Power Station to fall each year. That is according to Drax Group’s 21 April announcement, which describes the emissions clause as possibly the first of its kind in dry bulk shipping and was issued alongside the UK debut of the M.V. Ultra Yorkshire, the 40,000 deadweight-tonne Handymax carrier built at Japan’s Shin Kurushima shipyard and named during Drax Power Station’s 50th anniversary celebrations.
The Ultra Yorkshire docked at the Port of Liverpool carrying over 29,000 tonnes of biomass pellets from the Port of Greater Baton Rouge, the deepwater Louisiana facility where Drax has operated its dedicated biomass export terminal since 2015. The crossing ran entirely on B100 biofuel, which Drax estimated cut voyage emissions by around 90 per cent compared with VLSFO or ULSGO.
Mark Gibbens, Head of Logistics at Drax Group, confirmed Ultrabulk as the group’s largest freight provider and one of its longest-standing supply-chain partners, with the new contract extending a decarbonisation programme that now reaches into every mode of the pellet supply chain. “We are taking action to decarbonise our supply chain,” Gibbens said.
Ultrabulk, headquartered in Copenhagen and a subsidiary of Chilean shipping group Ultranav, operates across the Panamax, Supramax and Handysize segments with offices in 20 countries. Drax Power Station supplied about 5 per cent of UK electricity in 2025 from biomass produced across 18 operational and development pellet sites in North America with a combined nameplate capacity of around 5.4 million tonnes once expansions are complete, and Drax’s current subsidy agreement under the Starmer government runs to the same 2031 horizon as the new Ultrabulk contract.
International shipping accounts for roughly 3 per cent of global CO2 emissions, with the International Maritime Organization’s revised 2023 greenhouse gas strategy committing the sector to net zero by or around 2050 and at least 20 per cent interim reductions by 2030 against a 2008 baseline. The Drax-Ultrabulk clause now runs ahead of that timetable, following Drax’s 2024 and 2025 agreements with GB Railfreight and DB Cargo to run the UK rail leg to Selby on hydro-treated vegetable oil for an estimated 90 per cent cut in rail freight emissions, and Drax’s satellite-based mapping of carbon stocks across US and Canadian sourcing areas for verified coverage by the end of 2026.
The Port of Liverpool, owned by the UK’s second-largest port operator Peel Ports Group, takes delivery of the Ultra Yorkshire’s 29,000-tonne maiden cargo at a 90 per cent maritime CO2 saving against standard bunker fuels — with further annual reductions contracted out to March 2031.
