Press Releases - ABLE

‘WE CAN BECOME EUROPE’S SHIP RECYCLING CENTRE’ SAYS ABLE CHIEF
15/07/04

The Chief Executive of Able UK today (July 15th) underlined the ‘real potential for Teesside to become recognised as the European centre of excellence for ship recycling.’

Mr Peter Stephenson was speaking after giving evidence to a Committee of MPs where he explained the opportunity for the company’s TERRC (Teesside Environmental Reclamation and Recycling Centre) at Graythorp to gain business from UK and the rest of Europe, as well as handling redundant vessels from the United States reserve fleet.

Said Mr Stephenson “Currently we have contract with the US Government Agency MARAD for the recycling of 13 of the vessels from the James River fleet in Virginia and we would obviously like to handle more. There are a total of around 160 vessels in the fleet, but many of them are positioned at sites where it would not make it economically viable to transfer them to the UK.

“There is a major opportunity of attracting business from Europe. A report prepared for the European Commission called for the development of one ‘super facility’ to undertake ship recycling and made clear that it was not practical to either upgrade existing facilities in other parts of the world such as Asia, nor was it feasible to remove all hazardous materials and then export the vessels.

“We have been developing our facility at TERRC and it meets the recommendations of that report. We are also able to meet all the requirements of the recommendations for ship recycling issued last year by the International Maritime Organisation. The more business we can attract the more economic we can be—and the more we can invest in research and development and introducing new and even more environmentally friendly recycling techniques.

“Recycling is just one aspect of our plans for TERRC and the development of the dry dock. We also want to attract major marine construction projects which have the potential for creating large numbers of construction jobs.”

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