Ships that have completed their life cycle and usefulness are playing an important economic and environmental role as well. That’s because of the growing value of the scrap metal of ships. The shipbuilding industry gets many orders for new ships - and that means older vessels, often hundreds of years old, become outdated. These vessels are then cut into pieces and sold for scrap metal to the cash buyers.

Buying scrap vessels plays a significant role in helping to reduce the manufacturing cost and preserve the environment and natural resources. Turkey being the world’s largest cash buyer, while India being home to several ship recycling companies, gives employment to thousands of workers to recycle the vessel scraps.

Ship breaking is growing because obsolete ships are an ideal source for scrap because of their huge structure. Ships have a lifespan of 20 to 30 years, then after that metal starts to lose its texture, meaning that they’re no longer safer and economical to run.

What are the benefits of buying vessel scraps?

1. Scraps of the recycled ships are used in re-rolling mills and steel melting mills which use the vessel scrap to produce goods such as steel bars, pipes, poles, instruments, and more. Buying vessel scrap helps to boost the local economy, as it gives an upper hand in the trade of second-hand goods. This helps in increasing the local economy as the parts from the recycled ships are utilized by the small industries working to refurbish the items.

2. The beneficial effect of using vessel scrap to manufacture the products instead of using metal ore is to produce less greenhouse gas emissions. This reduction in the emission of greenhouse gas is due to less energy consumption as compared to the energy used while using iron ore. Moreover, the need to do metal mining is reduced because of the vessel scrap obtained from the obsolete ships, in turn leading to reduced greenhouse gas emissions.

3. Recycling vessel scrap from retired ships reduces air pollution and cuts down on the usage of water. In simple words, fewer natural resources are required to manufacture products from metal scrap. With increasing population rates and such a small percentage of the water on Earth fit for consumption, it only makes sense that people must preserve, and conserve this precious resource and recycling vessel scrap does the same thing by using less water.

4. Ship scrap yards helps to isolate those parts of the ships which are harmful to the environment and human lives as well. There are several toxic substances inside a ship. These harmful components include lead, mercury, oil sludge, and more. Not treating the retired ships allows the poisonous and harmful waste to be disposed of dangerously in an open space harming the environment but recycling vessel scrap removes all these hazardous practices, thus helping the environment.

Whenever demand increases for new ships, it usually means older vessels are being retired. Then cash buyers buy those retired ships and sell those to the ship recycling companies. Several useful parts can be recovered from a boat by recycling scrap material. Ship recycling companies in India do the same thing by recycling the vessel scrap at the lowest price and using it to boost the local economy.