End of Life Vessels
After 25-30 years ships are at the end of their sailing life. These ‘End of Life Vessels’ are sold and dismantled to recover the valuable steel. About 95% of the ship consists of steel. But the ships also contain large amounts of hazardous materials.
Asian states
In the 1970s shipbreaking was concentrated in Europe. Performed at docks, it was a highly mechanised industrial operation. But the costs of upholding environmental, health and safety standards increased. So the shipping industry moved to poorer Asian states.
Pristine beaches
A lot of ships end on the once pristine beaches of India,
Bangladesh, China,
Pakistan and Turkey.
Workers there scrap the ships without any protection. Toxic
waste is released into the environment. The only ones who profit are
the ship owners. They extract an average US$ 1.9 million profit per End
of Life Vessel.
Scrap market
Every year around 600-700 larger sea vessels are taken out of service and brought to Asia for scrap. In the 1990s they had an aggregate tonnage of around 15 million dwt a year. However, the scrap market increases and will increase substantially the following years. In 2001 the total number of vessels (608) sold for scrap already totalled a figure of 28 million dwt. This marks a year on year growth of nearly 25% (Source E.A. Gibson Shipbrokers).
Single hull tankers
The reasons of the growth of the scrap market are twofold. In 1999, the
Maltese-flagged oil tanker Erika collapsed. The Erika was a 25 year old
single-hull vessel, chartered by oil company TotalFina. It leaked more than
10,000 tons of heavy oil, polluting 400 km of coast of Brittany (France).
After this accident, the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) decided
to phase-out all single-hull oil tankers.
Phase-out
Another shocking accident happened in November 2002. The single hull oil tanker Prestige sank and polluted up to 4,000 km coastline in Spain and France with fuel oil. The EU then agreed to an accelerated phase-out schedule. The phase-out means that - starting from 1 January 2003 – many tankers will have to be taken out of service EXTRA in the coming years. Roughly 2,200 single hull oil tankers from the 4,000 crude oil tankers and oil products tankers (over 5,000 dwt). Together these tankers have a dwt of 175 million.
Increasing fleet
The other reason for the growth of the scrap market is the increase of the world fleet (> 100 gt) during the last decades. In 1960 there were around 15,000 ships with an aggregate dwt of 84 million. In 2000 there were around 62,000 ships with an aggregate dwt of 828 million. (Source: Lloyd's Marine Intelligence Unit.) With the growth in the world fleet the need to replace old ships for new ships increases as well. The result: a larger tonnage that has to be scrapped.
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