The Recycling of Ships Act, 2019

Imagine an industry, ship breaking, that historically operated with genuinely minimal environmental and worker safety oversight, ships beached and dismantled by hand, exposing workers to asbestos, heavy metals and other hazardous materials with little regulatory scrutiny, and recognising that operating this way indefinitely would eventually cost the industry access to ships from environmentally conscious shipowners in Europe, Japan and elsewhere who increasingly demanded certified, responsible recycling. The Recycling of Ships Act, 2019, exists specifically to formalise India's ship-breaking industry, covered under Ship-Breaking (Alang) elsewhere on this site, into exactly this internationally credible standard.

The Act, which received presidential assent on December 13, 2019, aligned Indian law with the Hong Kong International Convention for the Safe and Environmentally Sound Recycling of Ships, which India formally acceded to that same year, restricting and prohibiting hazardous materials on ships regardless of whether they're currently being recycled, a genuine safety standard applying across a vessel's operational life, not just at end-of-life.

The results at Alang have been genuinely substantial, 95 of the facility's 131 total plots have achieved Hong Kong Convention compliance, upgrading from the older, more hazardous beaching-only method to internationally certified safe and environmentally sound dismantling practices, exactly the certification level that opens access to ships from environmentally conscious European, Japanese and American owners who previously avoided sending vessels to uncertified Indian facilities.

This certification push connects directly to India's ambition, covered elsewhere on this site, to capture roughly 60% of the global ship recycling business, a target genuinely achievable only if Alang's compliant capacity keeps expanding, since environmentally conscious shipowners globally increasingly won't send vessels to uncertified facilities regardless of price, meaning Hong Kong Convention compliance isn't just an environmental checkbox, it's become the actual gateway to the higher-value segment of the global ship recycling market Alang is specifically trying to capture.