Germany Gets Its First Green Ship Recycling Facility

Ships can now be recycled in Germany instead of being transported over long distances to Southeast Asian Countries for demolition.

EWD Benli Recycling, part of the Emden-based shipyard Emden Werft und Dock (EWD), received the required permits from the Oldenburg State Trade Supervisory Office (GAA Oldenburg) this year.

The facility will dismantle seagoing vessels, inland waterway ships, passenger ships and ferries, along with offshore wind turbines and industrial plants.

Björn Sommer, the Managing Director, said that the facility will dismantle everything which enters the Port of Emden through the sea lock.

Lower Saxony’s Environment Minister Christian Meyer expressed his happiness at the fact that the Port of Emden can plan and build with a future in mind, so ships can be recycled there and not in distant nations.

The permit covers the recycling of government ships in non-commercial use, inland and coastal vessels and also seagoing vessels. It covers all steps of the ship recycling process, including subsequent dismantling and depollution of pollutants.

He added that many environmental disasters have occurred over the past years because old and obsolete vessels had to be shipped to Aia for dismantling, where they rotted under the worst conditions, affecting the environment and the health of the local communities.

Lower Saxony and Bremen have advocated for domestic ship recycling and raw material extraction in Germany through the Conference of Environment Ministers.

Environmental regulations have also become strict with the Hong Kong Convention

Additionally, in 2024, the Association for Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering, the representative of the maritime industry of Germany, called on the government to review legal hurdles to sustainable ship recycling in Germany.

The recycling of ships is regulated at European and International Levels, but in Germany, companies have faced major challenges in this regard in terms of obtaining a licence.

These issues should be reviewed and reduced to a reasonable level, the association stated.

The Hong Kong International Convention for the environmentally safe recycling of ships entered into force on June 26, 2025. It is an important milestone in how the world dismantles and recycles end-of-life vessels.

It also imposes strict regulations on recycling infrastructure, and only authorised facilities may dismantle ships.

In Europe, rules governing ship dismantling entered into force on November 20, 2013.

Source: Maritime Shipping News