EU Plans for Ship Scrapping Reignite Debate Over India's HKC Standards
A declaration by the European Union of plans to cooperate with India in ship recycling has ignited controversy over the country’s ability to dismantle end-of-life vessels in a sustainable manner.
On March 4, the European Commission published its comprehensive Industrial Maritime Strategy, which sets out steps to reinforce the EU’s industrial sovereignty, trade and economic security. The strategy suggests that the EU intends to work with trading partners with ship-recycling capacity, starting with India.
The EU’s plans to work with India in ship recycling has ignited debate on the status of the country’s recycling yards. On one side is GMS, the world’s largest cash buyer of ships for recycling, which has pointed out that the EU continues to exclude Indian beach-based ship recycling facilities from the EU Ship Recycling Regulation (EU SRR) approval list. According to GMS, the EU has a politically-motivated bias against Indian yards, which universally practice beaching for the purpose of demolition. Over 110 Indian yards hold Hong Kong Convention (HKC) Statements of Compliance issued by IACS member classification societies, but none are included in the EU SRR list.
“Applying a blanket geographic exclusion regardless of actual yard compliance is not regulatory prudence. It is regulatory inertia,” said Kiran Thorat, Trader, GMS. Thorat says that Indian yards have been investing heavily, retraining thousands of workers, rebuilding infrastructure and achieving one of the lowest lifecycle carbon footprints, and are surprised that the European Commission continues to withhold approval.
While GMS now wants the Commission to approve Indian yards and recognize the HKC as the primary global ship recycling framework, the NGO Shipbreaking Platform wants the EU to maintain its first-world standards for recycling in a safe and environmentally sound manner.
The NGO notes that Indian yards still rely fully on the beaching method, which remains hazardous for workers and the environment. It also points out the treatment of hazardous shipboard materials under the Basel Ban Amendment, which prohibits exports of toxic waste to less-developed countries.
“EU cooperation with third countries, including India, on ship recycling, must be based on the enforcement of strict social, occupational health and environmental standards as applied in the EU, clearly banning harmful practices such as beaching or landing as practiced in South Asia and Turkey respectively,” said Ingvild Jenssen, NGO Shipbreaking Platform Founder and Executive Director.
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The controversy over India’s ship recycling industry comes when the EU is staring at a crisis over the dismantling of end-of-life tonnage in the coming years. Despite EU shipping companies owning over 35 percent of the global fleet, only one percent of EU-owned ships are today dismantled by its registered yards. Most of the EU tonnage still ends in South Asia yards, which dismantles 80 percent of global tonnage.
Projections by BIMCO indicate that 15,000 vessels will be eligible for scrapping in the next decade. Industry insiders suggest that the majority of these end-of-life ships will continue to be resold and reflagged before ending up on beaches in India, Bangladesh and Pakistan for dismantling.
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