The Asian Shipowners’ Forum (ASF) warmly welcomes the tremendous effort made by ship recyclers in Alang, India that have recently received Statements of Compliance (SoC) with the Hong Kong Convention from ClassNK, one of the world’s leading classification societies.
The ASF consists of eight shipowner associations in Asia Pacific, i.e. Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Korea, Chinese Taipei and the Federation of ASEAN Shipowner Associations (FASA).
The ASF strongly believes that the granting of SoC by ClassNK to recyclers in India is a small but key milestone that conveys an accurate message to the international community of safety and environmental protection that developments in India have been certified by objective assessment of ClassNK who has considerable experiences and skills through audits of recycling operations carried out in multiple
countries.
Global demand for ship recycling is anticipated to remain high for more than a decade, therefore, ASF, whose membership is estimated controlling about 50% of the world's merchant fleet, repeatedly insists on every occasion by way of the ASF’s position paper (see Annex 1), that assessment of each ship recycling facility should be implemented individually without any prejudice in order to ensure the availability
of sustainable ship recycling capacity with environmentally sound and safe ship recycling manner.
Responding to this latest development, Dr Frank Lu, Chairman of the Ship Recycling Committee of the ASF, said, “I sincerely desire that ship recyclers all around the world demonstrate capable development and maintenance of safe and environment-friendly recycling operations in compliance with the spirit and requirements of the Hong Kong Convention. Such action would give examples that could to be followed by developing ship recyclers for their further improvement. The ASF members will, in the meantime, continue to urge their governments to ratify the Hong Kong Convention at the earliest opportunity.”
The ASF is scheduled to visit Alang in October 2015 to observe the current situation of ship recycling facilities, including the certified yards.
