What Actually Happens to the Retired Vessels?

 In this shipping industry, we celebrate the birth of new vessels with press conferences and bottles of champagne but on the contrary, we rarely address what actually happens with the retired ships. If you are one of those who have been wondering about what happens to the retired ships, then here's what you need to know about ship demolition and scrapping. 

 What happens to old vessels?

As the ships age with each passing year, vessel owners have various choices which include refurbishing and relocating the vessels into smaller regions, selling them to other lines or sending them to the yard for scraping purposes. At the end, all the ships will be retired and scrapped and yes of course, with some few exceptions like QE 2 which are later turned into hotels or attractions.

How the process of ship recycling is carried out at the yards?

Ship recycling involves a systematic removal of all items on board the ship and then cutting the ship metal into small blocks. Although it must be mentioned very clearly that this one line statement about ship recycling is really an ultra-extreme simplification of the ship recycling process.

Ship is a gigantic floating structure that is brought up to shore either by landing as is the case in Indian sib-continent and Turkey or the ships are put up alongside quay or are taken to the floating docks or dry docks.  The ship is then secured by different methods depending on she is taken for recycling to make sure that the ship stays intact in a balance position through- out the ship recycling process.

A very systematic study is made of the ship diagrams to understand the structure of the ship and based on the type of ship, the ship recycling process is planned and documented. Such planning is only possible to be done by people with proper experience and sound academic understanding on the subject.

All the hazardous items are identified, marked, removed from the ship, stored and disposed off to appropriate authorities. All the loose items on board the ship are systematically removed and stored. Lot of these items can be resold.

Finally, cutting of the ship commences. The structure of the ship which is made up of steel is systematically cut from the ship in big blocks and then further cut into smaller blocks which can then be resold to steel mills.

The recycling of ship takes anywhere from between four weeks to even 12 months depending on the type and size of ship.