17 October 2015

ASF’s visit to R.L.Kalthia Ship Breaking

Asian Shipowners’ Forum members together estimate to control about fifty percentage of the merchant fleet. ASF consists of eight members from the shipowners’ associations of Asia Pacific nations, i.e. Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Korea, Chinese Taipei and Federation of ASEAN Shipowners’ Associations, consisting of Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

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The Asian Shipowners’ Forum’s Ship Recycling Committee is a forum for members to exchange views on the international trends in ship recycling industry and ship recycling regulations. The objective of the committee is to share information on developments of regulations and ship recycling capacity and to voice the Asian view in order to ensure environment-friendly yards in as many countries as possible for economic and stable ship recycling in a timely manner.

Noting that India has high potential to ensure required capacity of environment-friendly yards for economic and stable ship recycling, ASF SRC welcomed Ship Recycling Industries Association (India) attendance for the first time in its 18th Interim Meeting of the ASF Ship Recycling Committee, held in Singapore on 23 March 2015. The SRC members were firmly committed to ensure full compliance with all applicable competition laws, it was emphasised that appropriate actions be taken to enable international society to properly understand the current state of Alang-type green ship recycling in view of increasingly negative campaigns against recycling method commonly used in Indian sub-continent.
The Ship Recycling Committee Members of Asian Shipowners’ Forum visited R.L. Kalthia Ship Breaking Private Limited on October 14, 2015 and reviewed the latest development of level of operations and facilities. R.L.Kalthia Ship Breaking Private Limited is quite concerned about the movement in theEuropean Commission to exclude recycling yards in certain regions due to an eventual prohibition of particular recycling method.

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The committee also confirmed that any unilaterally-imposed regional regulation could not be a final solution to ensure prevalence of green ship recycling worldwide as long as regulations do not consider common practices in major ship recycling countries. In this context, ASF SRC reconfirmed its long-standing policy that the Hong Kong Convention is the best solution as a practical measure to enhance safety and environmental protection for recycling.

ASF’s SRC,  working in cooperation with other maritime organisations, agreed to continue to urge the  European Commission to develop realistic guidelines to be aligned with the HKC to explore not a partial solution but a final solution for worldwide green ship recycling. At the same time, it was recommended that shipowners should assess and select ship recycling yards in harmony with the Hong Kong Convention for demolition of their fleets.

Source: Asian Shipowners’ Forum. 15 October 2015

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