“Mayday Mayday Mayday - this is MV Kaami...” It was a dark and stormy night in March when the radio operator sent out a distress call. The Norwegian freighter had run aground on the north-west coast of Scotland on its journey to Sweden from Ireland. For a seafarer, this is one of the worst disasters imaginable. The eight crew members had to be airlifted to safety by helicopter. But there was no saving the ship, which had been originally launched in 1994. Experts soon confirmed that the damage caused by the accident was irreparable.

But what do you do with a ship written off as a “constructive loss” by the insurance company? Nowadays, simply scuttling it is out of the question. But towing the wrecked vessel to a ship graveyard and leaving it there to slowly decay, as is still the case today with well over 100 larger fishing vessels in the Bay of Nouadhibou on the Mauritania coast (West Africa), harbours incalculable environmental risks due to oil losses and the gradual release of pollutants.

The alternative is to have the ship dismantled properly in a ship-breaking yard. These yards could be found all over the world until well into the 20th century. Over time, this business migrated from Europe to Asia – especially India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and China – because of the availability of cheaper labour and less stringent environmental laws. This brings its own problems, however. Catastrophic working conditions in many of these ship-breaking yards and the extreme hazards they pose for both people and the environment have often put this type of scrapping in a very critical light.

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This is why the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) placed the safe and environmentally sound dismantling of ships on its agenda for 2009. The Hong Kong International Convention for the Safe and Environmentally Sound Recycling of Ships has set globally applicable rules for this purpose. For example, each ship must be issued an Inventory of Hazardous Materials drawn up in advance. Ship-breaking yards will in future be required to have a certificate and submit a specific recycling plan for each ship before it is dismantled. But there is a catch: the Hong Kong Convention cannot enter into force until it has been ratified by at least 15 countries, representing more than 40 percent of the world gross tonnage of ships. In 2019, Germany was the 13th state to certify ratification - thus raising the achieved quota to 29.42 percent. So there is still work to be done.

In the meantime, however, the European Union is already implementing some of the rules in the Convention. According to Regulation (EU) No 1257/2013, ships of 500 gross tonnage and more that are flying the flag of an EU member state may only be dismantled at specially authorised recycling yards. The purpose of this regulation is to prevent, reduce, minimise and, where possible, eliminate accidents, injuries and other adverse effects of ship recycling on human health and the environment.

The shipping industry can thus make an important contribution to a circular economy where products or materials can remain in use longer, thus protecting the Earth’s natural resources. For example, life cycle assessments have shown that for every tonne of repurposed steel there is a CO₂ equivalent saving of more than 97 percent over new manufactured prime steel products. CO₂ equivalents are a unit of measurement that allows us to compare the effect of all greenhouse gases on the climate. This is quite an impressive figure, especially since CO₂ pricing and the legal regimentation of ecological footprints in business and trade are continuing to gain momentum worldwide.

But material handling technology was not the only important factor in the decommissioning of the MV Kaami at Kishorn Port. Recycling experts took a very close look at each piece of material and tested its recyclability. The goal was to avoid sending waste to landfills and to recycle as much material as possible.

After the ship had been dismantled, the materials were sorted and separated by the scrapping team. Several Liebherr machines were involved in the decommissioning of the cargo vessel. Two crawler excavators, an R 944 C Litronic and an R 956 Litronic, equipped with scrap shears, dismantled the ship into its individual parts. Two mobile material handling machines were used for loading during the removal process. An LH 40 M Industry Litronic loaded the material onto the lorries waiting in the dry dock below.

At the quay, an LH 50 M Industry Litronic was ready for loading the scrap onto a ship, which then carried it to a steelworks to be melted down and processed into new products. Shipping directly from the site saved on transport by road (approximately 48 articulated vehicle loads) and therefore helped to cut even more carbon emissions.

“The use of the Liebherr machines clearly demonstrated that without modern handling technology, it would not be possible to recycle materials on such a large scale”, explains Andreas Scheuerl, General Manager Sales Materialhandling Equipment at Liebherr-Hydraulikbagger GmbH. This means that the time-consuming and dangerous manual process can be replaced by efficient and economical material handling.

“Handling steel scrap and other metals is one of the toughest fields of operation”, says Scheuerl. The extremely robust construction of the Liebherr material handling machines, designed to meet the toughest requirements, has proven a great advantage in daily use, especially on the rough Scottish Seas. “The sophisticated engine technology and optimised, demand-controlled hydraulics provided maximum performance and efficiency when it came to sorting scrap and loading lorries and ships in the dry dock”, Scheuerl comments.

After 13 weeks, when the dry dock at Kishorn Port was ready to open its gates again and flood the construction site for the next decommissioned ship, the MV Kaami finally became history. But the history of sustainable scrapping is still unfolding, with extremely exciting perspectives for a new form of the circular economy.

Protecting the climate sometimes requires heavy-duty equipment: Liebherr mobile cranes, material handling machines and earthmoving equipment play a key role in the resource-saving circular economy. They score highly with increasingly environmentally friendly and sustainable, innovative technology.

Heavy equipment used at ship-breaking yards, scrapyards and recycling centres: no matter how hard the work, the environment is always a priority. Our Liebherr developers work across all divisions to ensure this with both large and small innovations – one step at a time, they are making construction and work machines increasingly efficient and environmentally friendly. This not only helps us achieve our climate targets, but also saves the users money and makes our work safer.