By Geena Paul
ALANG (Commodity Online): 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.
