Discussion on the recently published European list of approved ship recycling facilities has raised a number of issues at the fourth Ship Recycling Congress on January 25-26 in London.
Namely, while the Danish Shipowners’ Association continues to argue that the list, which at this stage only features 18 yards situated in Europe, should be used as an incentive to raise the bar globally, others call on additional legislation and raise priority for EU facilities.
The EU list differentiates between actual capacity of around 300,000 LDT and theoretical recycling capacity of each yard, in total over 1, 1 million LDT, making an assumption of the EU’s own recycling capacity extremely difficult, according to the Danish Shipowners’ Association.
“At this stage, it is extremely difficult for shipowners to react to the draft list as it does not feature any third country recycling yards. Moreover, the theoretical capacity is very different from the actual capacity, which means that the current list covers anything between 12 pct and 40 pct of the recycling capacity that the Commission set itself as a target,” Simon C. Bergulf, Director EU Affairs for the Danish Shipowners’ Association, said.
Although the list “was no silver bullet,” it marked an important milestone in ship recycling, Patrizia Heidegger, NGO Shipbreaking Platform’s Executive Director, said. She also stressed that if Indian yards were to be added to the list, this decision should be on the basis of demonstrated quality.
“It is clear that the EU list could be a great catalyst of change if it takes an open approach to third country yards. The changes happening in India over the past year have been tremendous, but this remains a process and only local engagement will secure further improvements,” Bergulf added.
The EU Ship Recycling Regulation enters into force at the latest on December 31, 2018 or as soon as the EU list of approved recycling facilities reaches the threshold of 2,5 million LDT.