Splash247: Ship recycling’s ambition problem

Published by Splash247

Defending today’s demolition model may be pragmatic, but it risks locking the industry into a compromise it was never meant to keep, argues Captain Soumitro Roy from the Elegant Exit Company.

Dr Anand Hiremath is right about one thing: South Asia has ship recycling capacity, and it is improving. But capacity is not the same as progress. And that is where the argument begins to unravel.

The Hong Kong Convention, adopted in 2009 and entering into force in 2025 unchanged, was never designed as a gold standard. It was a compromise, an attempt to regulate existing practices, including beaching, with incremental improvements. It was a starting point. Yet today, it is increasingly presented as the destination. That is not evolution. It is entrenchment.

The idea that the industry should scale what already exists sounds practical. It is also the fastest way to ensure nothing fundamentally changes. There was a time when men carried cargo on their backs through ship holds. It worked. It scaled. It employed thousands of people. It also disappeared. Those same economies now operate gantry cranes and automated terminals. Workers did not vanish, they moved up the value chain.

The same transition is visible on the streets. In many places, the barefoot rickshaw puller has been replaced by electric rickshaw operators, who are owners, not labourers. Progress did not remove livelihoods. It upgraded them.

This raises an uncomfortable question for ship recycling: are we defending jobs or defending the conditions in which those jobs are performed?

Manual cutting in open environments, exposure to hazardous materials, and labour operating at the edge of risk are images still associated with parts of this industry, but they are not inevitabilities. They are choices. The assertion that “capacity cannot appear on demand” is true—but incomplete. Capacity appears where capital, regulation, and intent align. Ship recycling is now at that moment.

HKC-compliant yards represent improvement. However, they do not yet represent full containment, zero discharge, dock-based dismantling, or integrated circular systems. These are not aspirational ideals. They are where the rest of heavy industry has already gone.

Frameworks such as the EU Ship Recycling Regulation and emerging UAE models are moving toward closed-loop, industrialised processes. Calling HKC compliance “the solution” risks freezing the industry at the level of its compromise.

Lifecycle arguments, particularly concerning rerolling, are often cited to defend the current system. They are valid, but incomplete. If lifecycle thinking is the benchmark, then transparency on hazardous waste, traceability of pollutants, and independently verified emissions must also be non-negotiable. They rarely are.

The ecosystem argument that recycling must remain where it already exists is equally fragile. Ecosystems are not permanent. They are transitional. If they were not, containerisation would never have replaced breakbulk.

The real risk is not a lack of industry capacity. It becomes comfortable with a version of itself that no longer meets the expectations being placed upon it.

HKC-compliant yards are not the problem. But they aren’t the endgame either. They are a bridge and bridges are meant to be crossed.

The commercial landscape is already shifting. What was once a purely price-driven decision is now increasingly shaped by capital providers, cargo owners, and regulators demanding verifiable sustainability. The question is no longer, “What is cheapest?” It is “what stands up to scrutiny?”

A principle that remains underemphasised is accountability at the source. Ships are not accidental waste. They are engineered assets. Yet their end-of-life responsibility is largely externalised. That disconnect is unlikely to hold. A credible future points towards integration: dismantling as reverse engineering, not improvisation; dry docks instead of tidal flats; skilled, permanent industrial workforces instead of exposure-based labour; and risk contained within auditable systems.

This is not idealism. It is where every high-risk industry eventually ends up. The industry is not choosing between geographies or methods. It is a choice between comfort and change.

There was enough breakbulk capacity. There were enough legacy systems. The world still moved on.

Ship recycling will too. The only question is whether the industry will lead that transition or wait to be forced into it like doubled hull tankers. Many stakeholders engaging with EEC are already asking for non-beaching solutions, and capacity is beginning to scale accordingly. Market expectations, not HKC alone, are driving this shift. Therefore, HKC should not be treated as a panacea.