As ship-breaking activity at Alang witnesses a slowdown, the Centre has asked the Gujarat Maritime Board and the Department of Ports and Transport of the State government to come up with “necessary orders” and standard operating procedures to explore the possibility of allowing the existing yards to double as vehicle scrapyards.
This yard is considered to be the largest shipbreaking yard in Asia, and the Centre has been pushing to expand its use for scrapping or recycling vehicles.
SRIA (Ship Recycling Industries Association – India) has raised the issue of disintegrating old vehicles as part of Gujarat’s Vehicle Recycling / Scrapping Policy. In the minutes of the meeting held earlier this year, Gujarat Maritime Board / Ports & Transport Department agreed to issue the necessary orders and SOP.
It is natural for ship recycling / breaking companies to scrap vehicles as well.
An official of the Union Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways, as well as representatives from the Gujarat Maritime Board and Ship Recycling Industries Association (India), chaired the meeting in January.
Furthermore, a BIS team will visit Alang – the country’s largest shipbreaking center – to study the ground operations of Ship Recycling.
Steel scrap from recycled ships is a valuable supply of raw material for our country’s re-rolling mills. Normally, re-rollable trash accounts for at least 70% of a ship’s total light displacement tonnage. These are then processed into bars and rods for use in the construction sector. Additional raw materials utilised to create bars and rods include re-rollable scrap from railways, pencil ingots from induction furnaces, semis from integrated plants, and imported scrap offerings.
The Ship Recycling Industries Association cited “non-viable norms of quality control order and BIS standard” impacting recyclers in a study earlier this year.
Activity at Alang has been hampered as a result of the amended regulations that went into force in 2012. “We…are unable to sell our materials directly to re-rollers,” the company stated, adding that 90% of the plots in the yard had received HKC compliance certification from globally acknowledged authorities.
