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Industry Overview

SHIP BREAKING INDUSTRY

Shipbreaking is considered to be the most sustainable way of disposing of end-of-life ships. Almost every part and machinery of the ships can be recycled or reused. More importantly for Bangladesh, the industry generates hundreds and thousands of direct and indirect job opportunities for the disadvantaged.

In the early 1970s ship breaking was a highly mechanized industrial operation carried out in the shipyards of Great Britain, Taiwan, Mexico, Spain and Brazil. But as the cost of upholding environmental and health and safety standards in developed countries has risen, ship breaking has increasingly shifted to poorer Asian states. In the late 80’s however this industry has mostly shifted to 5 major countries such as India, China, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Turkey. Among them India, Bangladesh and Pakistan accounts for 70-80% of the international market (Sarraf, 2010).

History of ship breaking in the Chattogram area:

 

In 1960 when a devastating cyclone gave birth to a misfortune, blowing and grounding of ‘M.V Alpine’ near Shitakunda, a coastal belt of Chittagong. Eventually the owner abandoned and sold the vessel to local metal workers called “Chittagong steel house” who scrounge it for scrap metal and materials, and it took them several years to completely dismantle the vessel. This led the misfortune to turn into a fortune for the local population and the entrepreneurs. During the liberation war in 1971 ships were also bombarded and obstructed the navigation channel which prompted salvage of wrecks, thus cementing the way for dismantling. This has encouraged the local entrepreneurs who found it a business opportunity in terms of re-roll able scrap metals and other fittings, fixture and equipment which could be sold as secondhand utility. A huge number of workers could manage to get a steady job unlike farming where there is off seasons. Gradually a large infrastructure, a significant number of linkage industries and supply chain shops developed. By the 80’s Chittagong ship breaking yard commercially entered into the business which boomed by the mid 90’s and became one of the leading ship breaking nations in the world. Back in the 90’s there had been only 36-40 yards operating in this business. Currently due to increasing urbanizations and growing demand of scrap metals and profitability, the number of registered yards between 2009-11 increased to 125 (The Daily Azadi, 2011). Some of the yards are big enough to accommodate 3-4 ships at a time. The expansion of this growth has certainly increased the global capacity as a whole.

Process of scrapping ships:

The process of breaking in Chittagong involves initially physical beaching of the vessel to the specific yard and this is generally done during maximum high water time, which is about 50-100 meters (depending how efficiently is beached) from the main yard. In the next high water the vessel is further pulled towards the yard with the help of mechanized winches and the same continues as the vessel is lightened by removing of stores, machineries and all other removable items. Primary cutting is done during the intertidal zone at the beaching yard with big chunks of section about 20-50 MT each, which are pulled on to the shore yard for additional cutting known as secondary cutting area. The customized cutting, resizing the plates into truckable size, sorting, segregating, loading, delivery is done in the secondary cutting area. On an average, a 10,000 LDT size ship takes around three months to complete the whole process.