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Visiting the Ship-Recycle Area in Aliağa

Posted on May 01 by Satoshi Katada

I visited Aliağa, where ship recycling is taking place in Turkey. It has been more than 30 years since I worked for a shipping company, but it was the first time for me to visit and see the dismantling shipyard. India and Bangladesh are famous for the dismantling of ships, but Turkey is also the fifth largest dismantling country after Pakistan and China, and has a share of about 5% of the total. Last year,108 ships including many passenger ships, that could still be used were withdrawn, due to the influence of Corona for the travel industry, and there were reports that 855,000 tons of steel was recycled, so I wanted to go there once. We often talk about the construction of environmentally friendly vessels and environmental considerations in terms of operation, but for the reason that the vessels of the company are sold as the second-hand vessels and the company is not involved in the dismantling activity. Actually, I have never discussed the matter about dismantling in the company. However, from the perspective of life-cycle management of the ship, it seemed necessary to have some involvement in the ship-recycle activity. Through this visit, I strongly wanted to get involved.