Shipowners: Recycling of ships will double by 2032

Hamburg/Copenhagen. With the climate-friendly conversion of the ship fleets, the ship cemeteries, which are mostly located on Asian beaches, are likely to see unprecedented numbers in the next few years. “In the next ten years, from 2023 to 2032, more than 15,000 ships with a deadweight tonnage of over 600 million tons are expected to be recycled,” Bimco, the international shipowners’ association based in Bagsværd near Copenhagen, reported on Wednesday. According to Bimco analyst Niels Rasmussen, that’s “more than double the amount recycled in the previous decade.”

According to Bimco calculations, 7,780 ships with a deadweight tonnage of 285 million tons have been recycled worldwide in the past ten years, mostly ships built in the 1990s. “Over the next decade, ships built in the 2000s will be the primary source for recycling,” the association writes. “Compared to the 1990s, more than double the deadweight capacity was built in the 2000s, which will drive the expected increase in recycling.” Bimco attributes the increasing need for recycling, at least in part, to the shipping industry facing tighter regulations on greenhouse gas emissions .

According to the association, by far the largest part of the tonnage is scrapped and processed in the Asian countries of Bangladesh, India and Pakistan. The international non-governmental organization Shipbreaking Platform has been denouncing for years that environmental damage, human rights violations, child labour, illnesses and deaths occur time and again.

Actually, environmentally friendly and safe scrapping should have been regulated globally long ago. There has been an international agreement on paper since 2009, which Germany ratified in 2019. However, this so-called Hong Kong Convention will only come into force when at least 15 countries with 40 percent of the global merchant fleet tonnage have joined. Bimco expressed optimism that this could happen soon after Bangladesh also announced it would sign the convention.

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