Ottawa eyes shipbreaking business
Half of Canada’s registered ships are 30 years old
The government of Canada thinks there may be an opportunity for Canadian companies to get into the business of scrapping and recycling ships that have outweighed their useful life.
Transport Canada l ast week put out a tender for “an assessment of the current Canadian capacity for small and large vessel recycling.”
Most ships last for a few decades, and when their useful life is over their owners typically sell them to countries that specialize in shipbreaking, such as Bangladesh, China, India, Pakistan and Turkey, the document notes.
When they scrap the ships, firms in these countries recover huge quantities of steel.
In Canada, some ships are not even worth towing overseas: Dock yards and shore lines across the country are increasingly littered with abandoned, discarded ships, Transport Canada suggests.
“A recent Transport Canada inventory shows 22 aban- doned vessels that are over 100 feet in length and made of steel,” says the document, Marine Vessel End-of-Life Cycle Management.
Transport Canada’s efforts to encourage a domestic ship recycling industry come as Canada has largely retreated from the business of building ships.
Until recently Canada retained a 25% tariff on the import to Canada of foreignbuilt ships. The penalty failed to inspire orders for domes- tic-built ships, however, and in 2010 Canada scrapped the tariff.
In response, recently ship owners in Canada such as Algoma Central Corp., Canada Steamship Lines, Lower Lakes Towing Ltd. and Transports Degagnés Inc. have ordered among them 35 new ships worth $1 billion, to renew the fleet that hauls bulk cargo such as grain, iron ore, rock, gravel, coal and salt through the St. Lawrence Seaway and the Great Lakes.
Even with new ships arriving at regular intervals, more than half of ships in Canada’s vessel registry are more than 30 years old, the document notes.
“It is expected that a large number of vessels in the Great Lakes fleet will be retired in the coming years as they reach the end of their operating lives,” the document notes.
“Beyond one key dedicated facility in Port Colborne, Ont., it is unknown whether facilities exist in Canada that would be in a position to dismantle and recycle large ships in a manner that is recognized as safe and environmentally responsible.”
The office of Marine Recycling Corp., the Port Colborne company, said nobody was immediately available for comment.
A strategy to grow Canada’s shipbreaking industry could create jobs and improve land, water and air quality, “including potential to improve end-of-life management to reduce or avoid vessels of concern,” the tender reads.
The tender acknowledges a unique challenge of recycling smaller vessels, made of steel, wood, and fibreglass.
“Unlike large commercial steel vessels, there is not as strong a market for the materials from these small vessels,” the document notes, adding that fibreglass is a tough material to break down and recycle, “in addition to the health hazards and the lack of market for end products.”
The report says there are tests on converting the fibreglass to fuel or using it in cement.
The push to nurture a domestic shipbreaking industry could offer other spinoff benefits. Edward Burtynsky, the globally acclaimed photographer, grew up in St. Catharines, Ont., on the Welland Canal, a key port for Great Lakes shipping.
Yet he gained global acclaim when he travelled to Bangladesh and produced a haunting collection of stirring photograph that depict shipbreakers working on the shore, dwarfed by gargantuan hulks of rusted steel that had once been ships.
Perhaps if shipbreakers operate domestically, it will inspire photographers to stay home and take pictures on Canadian soil.
A large number of vessels in the Great Lakes fleet will be retired