Dutch ship breaker plans green facility

Dutch ship breaker plans green facility

ECONOMIC REPORTER

A Dutch-Bangladeshi joint venture has decided to build a ship breaking unit at Chittagong using environmentally friendly practices, with its investors saying they consider Bangladesh the best place to set it up after carrying out a study on the location. Doebren Mulder, one of the patent owners of the Greendock BV project, has already met the minister for Environment and Forests, industries minister, delegation of European Commission, ship breakers in Chittagong and some new potential investors in the technology on his recent visit, says a press release.

The project will cost 50 million Euro and take one year to begin its operations, Mulder said.

He added that the first Grenndock site to be set up in Bangladesh was much cheaper than the original Ecodock site in Europe.

Mulder said, “We just finished a study with all recent figures and statistics.

Our experts are working to prepare the final report to share its findings with different local and international
stakeholders.”

Greendock is headquartered in Groningen.

Mulder said the steel infrastructurefor each dismantling site is to be built locally in low-cost Asian countries.

The concept involves floating pre-cleaned panamax-size ships into a specially-built graving dock and onto a steel pontoon of around 20,000 cbf, which is then raised by pumping in air. Mulder said that ships could then be cut into 20 pieces, each of around 500 tones, which are then wheeled to a dismantling site for further cutting.

Greendock claimed its system could dismantle vessels in 15 days, as compared with five to eight months for ships that are beached.

The company said that dismantling in a closed environment would reduce environmental pollution.

Mulder said that the feedback from the group of Scandinavian investors has been positive.

The investors have agreed to pay around EURO 66 per ton for pre-cleaning and then a fee similar to that earned by brokers for the dismantling.

Greendock would also receive commission for finding a buyer of the steel, proceeds of which go the vessel owner.

Initially, interest in the concept came from China but the investors then examined sites in Bangladesh and Thailand.

In Bangladesh the company has been registered as a Joint Stock Company with the Ministry of Commerce and a joint venture partnership has been set up in the name of “GreenDock Bangladesh Limited”.

Having its set up in Chittagong, a dynamic well trained and equipped Greendock team is working to realize the project step by step, Qumrul Islam Chowdhury, resident director of Greendock Bangladesh Ltd in Chittagong said, “Greendock is aiming to develop a database of workers who are now jobless.

We are also developing a complete plan with the help of French and Dutch experts to put a new know how.”

source:http://www.theindependentbd.com/business/others/19334-dutch-ship-breaker-plans-green-facility.html