The Gujarat Maritime Board (GMB) has written to all beaching yards in Alang, India, telling them to fit an impermeable floor to their facilities by July 2018 or they will not be allowed to beach ships.
GMB believes the move will be the final step in meeting the standards laid out in the Hong Kong International Convention for the Safe and Environmentally Sound Recycling of Ships (Hong Kong Convention).
India’s 2013 Shipbreaking Code has already brought the Alang yards largely in line with the Hong Kong Convention, with exception of the building of a floor to provide a barrier to stop micro-pollutants entering the subsoil or tidal area.
In a letter to the Ship Recycling Industries Association, the GMB wrote: “You are directed to instruct all shiprecyclers to carry out improvement of plots by way of providing an impervious floor as certified by a reputed classification society in the plot urgently and submit their certificates to GMB regarding satisfactory completion.
“[The] Time limit to complete the work of providing an impervious floor in the plot is reckoned as 30 July 2018 and, beyond this timeline, no ship shall be allowed to be beached.”
Around a dozen or so Indian yards, including the likes of Kalthia Shipbreaking and Priya Blue Industries, have already fitted a concrete floor as part of a Hong Kong Convention statement of compliance programme run by Japan’s ClassNK.
Italian classification society Rina is running a similar scheme, although it does not always require an impermeable floor to be in place to achieve the compliance certification.
So there are dozens more active plots in Alang that will have to be fitted with a floor in less than a year to meet the GMB’s “strict requirement”, as described by one local breaker.
In a parallel move, the Indian government is working towards incorporating the Hong Kong Convention into its national law and, if it succeeds, there is a good chance it will enter into force globally in the next few years.
Turkey has already ratified the Hong Kong Convention and, if as expected, China and India follow, then enough of the world’s shipbreaking capacity will be aligned with the regulation to mandate it internationally.
That will give India a huge commercial advantage in the shipbreaking market as its yards will have already met the convention’s standards, while there has been very little progress in the country's South Asian rivals of Bangladesh and Pakistan.
Should India ratify, then its yards could also potentially qualify for a multi-million-dollar overseas aid scheme from Japan aimed at improving shipbreaking facilities further.
One breaker told TradeWinds: “India is showing good progressive actions and surely will ratify the Hong Kong Convention soon.”
However, the installation of an impermeable floor is unlikely to satisfy environmentalists. The NGO Shipbreaking Platform has long claimed that such a covering does not sufficiently protect the intertidal zone. The European Commission’s own shipbreaking standards for European-flag ships are also unclear on whether an impermeable floor is adequate to protect the beaching and tidal areas.
