‘No work’: India’s Alang, the world’s largest graveyard of ships, is dying

Alang, India—Ramakant Singh gazes out at the empty horizon from Gujarat's windswept Arabian Sea coastline. The 47-year-old, who works at the world’s largest ship-breaking yard, recalls a time when the coastline was packed with vessels awaiting dismantling. “In the olden days, ships lined up at this yard like buffaloes before a storm,” he says, “Now, we count the arrivals on our fingers.”

Located in Bhavnagar district of Gujarat, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state, Alang became the backbone of India’s ship recycling industry in the 1980s, thanks to its unique tidal patterns and gently sloping beach, which allowed ships to be beached and dismantled cheaply. Ramakant has spent two decades dismantling massive ships, including oil tankers and cargo carriers from Europe and Asia.

Over the years, Alang has dismantled over 8,600 vessels, representing about 98 percent of India's total ship recycling and a third of the global volume. These ships collectively weighed approximately 68 million tonnes of light displacement tonnage (LDT) – the weight of a ship without fuel, crew, or cargo.

Across the globe, a significant number of cargo ships, cruise liners, and oil tankers are reaching the end of their operational lives. Roughly half of the 109,000 vessels currently in service are over 15 years old and will soon be retired.

Annually, around 1,800 ships are deemed unfit for sailing and sold for recycling. Owners transfer them to international middlemen, known as cash buyers, who operate from shipping hubs like Dubai, Singapore, and Hong Kong. These brokers then resell the vessels to dismantling yards in South Asia, where the ships are ultimately broken down.

In Alang, the ship-breaking process involves beaching vessels at high tide. Once grounded, hundreds of workers dismantle them piece by piece, salvaging steel, pipes, and machinery. Almost everything, from cables to cupboards, is resold for use in construction and manufacturing.

That said, the reality is a bit more complicated. ship arrivals in Alang have decreased over the last decade. The skyline, once dominated by giant hulls resembling high-rise buildings, now features only a few cruise ships and cargo carriers.

Chintan Kalthia, who runs one of the few remaining open yards, told Al Jazeera, “Earlier, there was plenty of work for everyone. Now, most of the workers have left. Only when a new ship beaches do a few come back to Alang. My own business is down to barely 30-40 percent of what it used to be.”

According to the Ship Recycling Industries Association, Alang's busiest financial year was 2011-12, with 415 ships dismantled. Since then, the yard has experienced a sharp decline. Only about 20 of the 153 plots along the 10km coastline remain functional, operating at about 25 percent capacity.

Haresh Parmar, secretary of the Ship Recycling Industries Association (India), cites several reasons for Alang's struggles. A major factor is that shipowners are not retiring older vessels due to a post-COVID surge in demand that has led to record profits in shipping. Soaring freight rates incentivize owners to extend the operational life of ships instead of sending them for dismantling.

Global disruptions are a key factor behind the surge in freight rates. The conflict in Gaza and attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea by Yemen's Houthi rebels have forced ships to avoid the Suez Canal, opting for the longer Cape of Good Hope route. This has caused freight rates to increase and cargo to be delayed.

An analysis by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in June 2022 revealed that the Russia-Ukraine war and Middle East tensions had increased marine fuel costs by over 60 percent, adding to operational expenses and delays.

These factors have significantly reduced the number of end-of-life ships being sent to Alang. Parmar explains, “When owners are earning well, they don’t scrap their vessels. That’s why our yards are standing empty.”

**Compliance Costs Add to the Pressure**

Alang's struggles are not solely due to global shipping trends. India's ship recycling industry has undergone significant changes since acceding to the Hong Kong International Convention for the Safe and Environmentally Sound Recycling of Ships (HKC) in November 2019, making it one of the first major ship-breaking nations to do so. To comply with the HKC and the 2019 Recycling of Ships Act, yards in Alang upgraded their infrastructure, installed pollution control systems, lined hazardous waste storage pits, trained workers, and maintained detailed inventories of toxic materials.

These upgrades have made Alang-Sosiya Ship Recycling Yards (ASSRY) one of the most compliant ship-recycling clusters in the developing world, with 106 yards receiving HKC Statements of Compliance (SoC). Sosiya is adjacent to Alang on the Gulf of Khambhat coast in Gujarat; together, they comprise the entire ship-breaking area.

That said, the reality is a bit more complicated. meeting these standards has been costly. Each yard invested between $0.56m and $1.2m to meet compliance norms, increasing operational costs amid fierce competition from neighboring countries.

Kalthia, whose company was the first in India to receive HKC compliance certification in 2015, compares the situation to a roadside eatery versus a global burger chain: “The chain has shinier rules, cleaner kitchens, and safer gear, but you pay extra for the sparkle. The Hong Kong Convention works the same way.”

Chetan Patel, a yard owner in Alang, notes that while compliance improves safety and aligns with international standards, it also significantly raises costs. This makes it difficult for Alang's ship-breakers to offer competitive prices.

Patel states, “When neighboring markets can pay more, shipowners go there.”

Competing ship-recycling yards are thriving. In Bangladesh’s Chattogram port and Pakistan’s Gadani yard, shipowners are offered $540-550 per LDT and $525-530 per LDT, respectively, while Alang offers $500-510 per LDT.

Parmar says, “We can’t match the rates offered by Bangladesh and Pakistan. If we tried, we’d be running at a loss.”

Data reflects this: the number of ships decommissioned in India decreased from 166 in 2023 to 124 in 2024. In contrast, Turkiye's figures nearly doubled to 94 from 50, and Pakistan's rose from 15 to 24 during the same period.

**Supporting Industries Suffer**

Alang's decline impacts the broader regional economy, which depends on the ship-breaking industry.

Along an 11km stretch of road from Trapaj, the last major town before Alang, shops sell salvaged items from decommissioned ships. These shops offer everything from rusted chains and rescue boats to refrigerators, ceramic crockery, and gym equipment.

Parmar explains, “Whatever is there on the ship, we own it. Before the cutting begins, all valuable items are auctioned and reach these stores.”

Ram Vilas, who sells salvaged crockery by weight, says his customers used to come from businesses across Gujarat, but now business is slow. “This stretch you see doesn’t even have one-tenth of the crowd it used to. With fewer ships coming in, we don’t have enough stock to fill our shops.”

The effects of Alang’s decline extend to waste management facilities and steel suppliers in Bhavnagar, about 50km away. Reusable steel is converted into reinforced steel rods and other construction materials. That said, the reality is a bit more complicated. the reduced supply of scrap steel has disrupted operations, impacting hundreds of small businesses.

More than 200 retail and wholesale shops that once thrived now face declining sales.

Parmar notes, “Gas plants, rolling mills, furnace units, transporters, drivers — everyone connected to this chain has lost their livelihood.”

Jigar Patel, who runs a flange manufacturing unit in Bhavnagar, says his business has suffered since opening his unit in 2017 due to the easy availability of steel sheets from Alang. “But in the past two years, the slowdown has hit hard. Now, I have to buy sheets from Jharkhand. It’s not just expensive, but the raw steel is harder to cut and process. The Alang sheets were more malleable and ductile — they were made for work and of international standard.”

Workers, mostly migrants from poorer states like Jharkhand, Bihar, Odisha, and Uttar Pradesh, are also leaving Alang. Vidyadhar Rane, president of the Alang-Sosiya Ship Recycling and General Workers’ Association, says they only come when ships arrive and find other jobs in nearby towns the rest of the time.

At its peak, Alang employed over 60,000 workers; today, that number has fallen to fewer than 15,000, according to the union.

Ramakant, who arrived in Alang at 35, recalls working continuously for seven years before the slowdown. He now only returns when called by his employer, spending the rest of his time working in Surat.

He acknowledges that the work is now safer than before. “This was once the deadliest job — we would see workers dying every other day. Now there’s training, safety gear, and order,” Ramakant says, looking towards the silent coast.

“But what’s the point of safety when there’s no work? Everything now depends on whether the next [ship] arrives at the yard or not.”