India Becomes World’s No. 1 Ship Recycler Under the IMO Hong Kong Convention

CURRENT AFFAIRS | 24 JUNE 2026

India has become the world’s top ship-recycling nation, accounting for about 35.4% of global ship recycling in 2025 and dismantling roughly 2.99 million gross tonnes — a 60% jump over 2024, per UNCTAD data cited in a government maritime review. The milestone means India hit its Maritime India Vision 2030 targets a full five years early, a rare instance of a long-range policy goal being met ahead of schedule.

From Alang to the World

The engine of this rise is Alang in Gujarat, the world’s largest ship-breaking hub, where end-of-life vessels from across the globe are beached and dismantled. What has changed is not the scale but the standard. Around 115 ship-recycling facilities have now attained compliance with the International Maritime Organization’s Hong Kong International Convention, marking a deliberate shift away from hazardous, polluting scrapping towards recycling that is both safe for workers and environmentally sound.

That compliance is what allows India to attract high-value tonnage and reputable shipowners who increasingly insist on green dismantling. The combination of sheer capacity at Alang and a credible regulatory upgrade explains how India leapt past rivals to a one-third share of the global market in a single year.

The scale figures underline the point. Recycling close to 2.99 million gross tonnes in a single year, a roughly 60% jump over 2024, is not a marginal gain but a structural shift in where the world sends its old ships. Competing yards in neighbouring countries have faced criticism over safety and environmental records, and as buyers grow more selective, the premium attaches to yards that can certify compliant practice. India’s early achievement of its Maritime India Vision 2030 targets therefore reflects both demand moving towards greener destinations and supply-side investment in upgrading the Alang cluster to meet the Convention’s standards.

The International-Law Cluster

India ratified the Hong Kong Convention in 2019 and gives it domestic teeth through the Recycling of Ships Act, 2019. The Convention itself entered into force in June 2025, completing the long journey from adoption in 2009 to binding international law. It works alongside the older Basel Convention (1989), which governs the trans-boundary movement of hazardous waste. Together these instruments form the green-recycling framework — and the IMO, the UN’s specialised agency for shipping, sits at its centre.

Why the Convention Cluster Matters

The deeper significance of India’s lead is that it shows international law and domestic law working in tandem. A convention adopted at the IMO has no direct force inside India until Parliament gives effect to it; the Recycling of Ships Act, 2019 is the bridge that transforms an international commitment into enforceable domestic obligation. This dualist relationship — treaty adoption abroad, statutory enactment at home — is a recurring theme across Indian engagement with global regimes, from trade to the environment, and the ship-recycling story is one of its cleaner illustrations.

Equally instructive is the division of labour between the Hong Kong Convention and the Basel Convention. The Basel Convention, born in 1989, polices the movement of hazardous waste across borders and reflects an earlier anxiety that rich nations were exporting dangerous scrap to poorer ones. The Hong Kong Convention narrows the focus to ships specifically, setting standards for how end-of-life vessels are designed, surveyed and dismantled so that the process is safe for workers and the coastline alike. Reading the two together, an aspirant can see how the international community layers specialised instruments on top of broader framework treaties — and why India needed both ratification and the 2019 Act to convert Alang from a notorious beach into a compliant, green-recycling hub.

The economic and human stakes give the legal framework its urgency. Ship-breaking has historically been one of the most dangerous occupations in the world, exposing workers to asbestos, heavy metals and explosions, while the beaching method leaches pollutants into coastal ecosystems. The push for Hong Kong Convention compliance is therefore not box-ticking but a genuine attempt to make a high-employment industry survivable and sustainable. India’s leap to the top of the table, achieved while raising standards rather than cutting corners, is the headline both the government and the industry want to project.

Treat this achievement as a ready-made revision of maritime international law. If you can name the IMO as the UN’s shipping agency, set the Hong Kong Convention against the Basel Convention and cite the Recycling of Ships Act, 2019 as the domestic enforcement law, you will comfortably handle the GK and legal-awareness questions this story can generate — from convention-matching items to data-based questions on India’s market share.