Tag: NGO ShipBreaking Platform

The Dutch court has imposed a fine of 780.000 EUR to the Dutch ship owner Holland Maas Scheepvaart Beheer II BV for having beached a ship for scrapping in India. The company also paid a settlement of 2.2 million EUR, totaling to a price tag of almost 3 million EUR.

In its quarterly update, NGO Shipbreaking Platform reported that a total of 113 ships were broken in the Q3 of 2018, and 79 of these ships were sold to the beaches of South Asia. Meanwhile, between July and September, three workers have lost their lives in shipbreaking in Alang, India.

Although the industry wants low-cost shipbreaking yards to be added to the EU approved facilities to meet demand from vessels bound by the bloc’s ship recycling law, a new report by NGOs Shipbreaking Platform and T&E shows the current EU list can accommodate the EU-flagged ships scrapped every year.

In its recently published figures for the second quarter of 2018, NGO Shipbreaking Platform informed that a total of 220 ships were dismantled, 169 of which were sold to South Asian recycling yards for 'dirty and dangerous breaking'. Also in this period, a total of 8 deaths and 9 injuries were recorded in these yards.

Ahead of the EU Ship Recycling Regulation entering onto force from 31 December 2018, ECSA noted that the current edition of the EU list of approved ship recycling facilities only features yards situated in Europe and has a capacity of around 300.000 LDT, which is far away from the 2.5 million LDT mentioned in the Regulation.

On Monday, the EU member states’ experts on ship recycling met in Brussels to discuss the latest developments, six months ahead of the application of the 2013 Ship Recycling Regulation, with a special focus on China's recent decision to stop the import of end-of-life ships for scrapping, which is expected to affect shipbreaking industry.

Pollutant and dangerous scrapping has been a key area of concern for Pakistani ship recycling industry. As in India and Bangladesh, the yards in Gadani operate directly on the beach, without any impermeable and drained working areas to protect the sea and sand from pollution.

Dirty and dangerous shipbreaking practices in Bangladesh have been strongly criticized both by global NGOs for many years, with marine pollution, hazardous waste dumping and unsafe working conditions, as well as the illegal exploitation of child workers, being among the key areas of concern.

The issue of unsustainable ship recycling, with hazardous working practices and environmental pollution, mostly in Southeast Asian yards, has been for several years a key area of concern for global NGOs and the international shipping industry. The problem in Alang was first documented by Greenpeace in 1998.

Death rate in Southeast Asian shipbreaking yards for 2018 has so far seen an upsurge, with 10 fatalities and 2 serious injuries in Chittagong alone, according to figures published by NGO Shipbreaking Platform for the first quarter of the year. There was a total of 206 ships broken in Q1 2018, 152 of which were sold to the beaches of South Asia for dirty and dangerous breaking.