The demolition yards at Alang, India received a record number of cruise and passenger ships in the past 12 months.
More specifically, as Captain Rakesh Mishra, a port officer at Alang, explains, one or two passenger ships get beached at Alang each year. However, cruise ships came in large numbers during the last 12 months. In fact, this is the highest number of passenger ships to have arrived at Alang in a single year.
Namely, 14 passenger ships were beached in the past 12 months, with port officials expecting at least one more possibly by mid-November.
What is more, Captain Mishra added that passenger ships have accounted for about 10% of the approximately 150 ships sent to the breaker yards in India in the past 12 months.
A cause for this surge was the strong demand for steel, which contributed to the influx of old cruise ships. However, Haresh Parmar of the Ship Recycling Industries Association, notes that cruise ships contain less steel in comparison to the cargo ships and tankers arriving at Alang.
As a result, passenger ships generally receive lower prices, but because many of the ships arriving this year are coming from bankruptcy situations, they are arriving still stocked with valuable spare parts.
