Asian Shipowners’ Forum
members together estimate to control about fifty percentage of the merchant
fleet. ASF consists of eight members from the shipowners’ associations of Asia
Pacific nations, i.e. Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Korea, Chinese
Taipei and Federation of ASEAN Shipowners’ Associations, consisting of
Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
The Asian Shipowners’
Forum’s Ship Recycling Committee is a forum for members to exchange views on
the international trends in ship recycling industry and ship recycling
regulations. The objective of the committee is to share information on
developments of regulations and ship recycling capacity and to voice the Asian
view in order to ensure environment-friendly yards in as many countries as
possible for economic and stable ship recycling in a timely manner.
Noting that India has
high potential to ensure required capacity of environment-friendly yards for
economic and stable ship recycling, ASF SRC welcomed Ship Recycling Industries
Association (India) attendance for the first time in its 18th Interim Meeting
of the ASF Ship Recycling Committee, held in Singapore on 23 March 2015. The
SRC members were firmly committed to ensure full compliance with all applicable
competition laws, it was emphasised that appropriate actions be taken to enable
international society to properly understand the current state of Alang-type
green ship recycling in view of increasingly negative campaigns against recycling
method commonly used in Indian sub-continent.
The Ship Recycling
Committee Members of Asian Shipowners’ Forum visited R.L. Kalthia Ship Breaking
Private Limited on October 14, 2015 and reviewed the latest development of
level of operations and facilities. R.L.Kalthia Ship Breaking Private Limited
is quite concerned about the movement in theEuropean Commission to exclude
recycling yards in certain regions due to an eventual prohibition of particular
recycling method.
The committee also
confirmed that any unilaterally-imposed regional regulation could not be a
final solution to ensure prevalence of green ship recycling worldwide as long
as regulations do not consider common practices in major ship recycling
countries. In this context, ASF SRC reconfirmed its long-standing policy that
the Hong Kong Convention is the best solution as a practical measure to enhance
safety and environmental protection for recycling.
ASF’s SRC, working in cooperation with other maritime
organisations, agreed to continue to urge the
European Commission to develop realistic guidelines to be aligned with
the HKC to explore not a partial solution but a final solution for worldwide
green ship recycling. At the same time, it was recommended that shipowners
should assess and select ship recycling yards in harmony with the Hong Kong
Convention for demolition of their fleets.
Source:
Asian Shipowners’ Forum. 15 October 2015
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