In 2009, Indian steel industry witnessed a flood of trucks from Alang, the small town in India’s Gujarat state which has the word’s biggest ship breaking yard, pumping in thousands of tonnes of scrap? metal into the market.

In fact, 2009 was a boom year for the ship breaking industry in Alang, situated in Bhavnagar district.

The shipyards at Alang recycle approximately half of all ships salvaged
around the world. The yards are located on the Gulf of Khambat, 50 km
southeast of Bhavnagar.

The ship breaking work provides job to thousands of people.

?Large supertankers, car ferries, container ships, and a dwindling
number of ocean liners are beached during high tide, and as the tide
recedes, hundreds of manual laborers dismantle each ship, salvaging
what they can and reducing the rest into scrap. Tens of thousands of
jobs are supported by this activity and millions of tons of steel are
recovered.

In 2009, the yard is churning out almost 8000 tonnes of scrap material
everyday. If you visit the Alang yards now, you can witness hundreds of
ships lined up and more waiting to in the sea to enter the yards.

As many as 130 ships are being broken simultaneously now in Alang. With
this, Alang ship breaking yard has crossed the milestone of dismantling
5,000 ships before the end of 2009. Since its inception in 1982, the
yard has recycled 35.61 lakh light displacement tonnage (LDT).

The yard dismantled 4,970 ships up to the end of September 2009. With
20 and 29 ships recycled during October and November, respectively, the
yard has crossed an important milestone of breaking 5,000 ships since
its inception. Till now, 5,019 ships have been recycled at the yard.

Till November 2009, the yard had dismantled 255 ships. In fiscal
2008-09, 264 ships were dismantled at the yard. While 255 ships were
recycled by the end of November 2009. With four months left in the
fiscal, the shipyard will perform better than the previous year.

Alang yard recycled 1.94 million light displacement tonnage (LDT)
during 2008-09, 174% more than the last fiscal. The yard recycled a
record number of 348 ships in 1997, 347 ships in 1998 and 361 ships in
1999. At present, as many as 130 ships have been brought to the yard’s
15 plots for dismantling.

At present, all the ship-breaking units in the yard have their hands
full. The quantum of work is providing direct employment to 40,000
workers.

Meanwhile, Alang this year had the distinction of getting the world’s
largest? crude oil carrier in its yard. ‘Mont’, the largest ship ever
to be scrapped in the country, has reached the Alang yard in December.

Mont was originally known as ‘Knock Nevis’ when it was built in 1979 in Norway.

The ship has light displacement tonnage (LDT) of about 87,500 metric
tonne and costing a minimum of Rs 61.69 crore, with international price
of each LDT ranging between $150 and 175.

Over 18,000 people will be needed for dismantling it. Mont was bought
by no V-1 in Sosya yard of Priya Blue Industries Pvt Ltd, owned by
Sanjay Mehta.

Source: Commodity Online

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