Industry and unions split over Indian yards on EU recycling list
Two Alang facilities would be the first in India admitted to the European List of approved yards
Opposition to a European Commission proposal to admit two Indian yards to the European List of approved ship recycling facilities has widened beyond the environmental groups that raised it first.
The two facilities, Shree Ram Vessel Scrap and YSI Recyclers, both at Alang-Sosiya in Gujarat, would be the first Indian yards on the list, which governs where European Union-flagged ships may legally be dismantled. A joint letter to Commissioners Jessika Roswall and Stephane Sejourne, signed by the industrial union federation IndustriAll Europe, the European steel association EUROFER, recycling industry bodies and environmental organisations, asks the Commission not to proceed.
The signatories make two arguments. The first is regulatory: the letter points to the Gujarat Pollution Control Board, the authority that would supervise the yards, describing chronic understaffing, limited technical capacity, insufficient monitoring and sampling, and weak transparency. The second is competitive. EUROFER's members operate European dismantling and steel recovery plants that have invested in containment, worker safety and waste management; approving yards that work by beaching, they argue, rewards the facilities that did not.
Beaching is the practical heart of the dispute. The method drives a ship onto an intertidal zone and dismantles it where it grounds, without a dock or an impermeable floor beneath the hull. No European Union member state permits it. The facilities proposed for the list have been assessed individually, and it is that facility-by-facility approach, rather than the method, that the signatories are contesting.
The shipowning side is lobbying in the opposite direction. Industry bodies including INTERCARGO have written their own open letter to EU ministers supporting the inclusion of Indian yards, arguing that keeping compliant Alang facilities off the list pushes tonnage towards yards with no oversight at all and leaves the European List too small to absorb the ships that will come for demolition this decade.
The decision sits with the Commission, which updates the European List periodically. Alang remains the largest single recycling location in the world by tonnage, and no facility there has yet been admitted.
This story is part of the Maritime Briefing of 23 September 2026.
