Five European ship recycling yards have
joined forces to effectively raise awareness of existing best practice and the
fact that there is capacity in Europe to properly recycle ships.
The newly established European Ship Recyclers
Group (ESR), set up under the umbrella of the International Ship Recycling
Association (ISRA), aims at reaching out to ship owners that are looking for
clean and safe ship recycling.
The NGO Shipbreaking Platform can only
welcome this step and vows to support their efforts in attracting more business
as long as they maintain sustainable practices.
The European Union approved 18 ship recycling
facilities with a total capacity of 1.1 million LDT under the EU Ship Recycling
Regulation in December last year. All 18 facilities are located within the EU
and the newly established ESR represents five of these yards – from France
(Port of Bordeaux), Belgium (Galloo), Denmark (Smedegaarden), the Netherlands
(Scheepssloperij) and Spain (DDR).
The European Commission is currently revising
18 additional applications from facilities located outside the EU. To make it
on the EU list of approved facilities, yards need to prove that they are able
to contain pollutants, ensure safe working conditions and the environmentally
sound management of all wastes derived from the recycling activities.
Facilities that operate on tidal beaches are not expected to make it on the EU
list.
Whilst ship recycling facilities in Europe,
as in the US and China, currently operate under-capacity because they are
unable to compete with the higher prices offered by the beaching yards in South
Asia, the EU list comes with a promise of raising the profile of yards that
have already invested in infrastructure and technologies to ensure safe and
clean practices.
“ESR’s main goals are to unite all European
ship recycling yards and let the ship owners know that there is capacity for
ship recycling in Europe. Our message is a clear, if we can handle them, let’s
keep the EU-flagged ships in Europe,” says Peter Wyntin of Galloo, chairman of
ESR. “ESR will be in close contact with local and EU governments to make sure
substandard and unlicensed recycling practices also within Europe are ended,”
Wyntin added.
Ship owners are regrettably quick in
rejecting European recyclers under the false pretext that there is no capacity
in Europe.
European yards today primarily recycle
government-owned and smaller vessels, but questioned by the NGO Shipbreaking
Platform in 2013, almost all European yards expressed that a promise of an
increased market share of the commercially owned vessels would prompt
investments to enlarge their facilities, or use currently dormant locations, to
enable the recycling of also the largest ships.
Source: marine
link. 10 March 2017
1 comment:
Very informative post.Thanks for sharing.
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