Written by PPL Newsroom• October 1, 2026• 9:04 am• Business & Sustainability

India tops global ship recycling in 2025, meeting its 2030 goal five years early

UNCTAD data shows India recycled 2.99 million gross tonnes of ships in 2025, with Alang-Sosiya doing most of the work. Worker safety is still being watched.

India became the world’s largest ship recycling nation in 2025, according to the latest report from the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). The Maritime India Vision 2030 target of becoming the world’s leading ship recycling nation was therefore met five years ahead of schedule. The ports ministry announced the milestone on 22 June 2026. It matters because old ships are a large store of steel that can be reused instead of newly mined.

The numbers

UNCTAD data puts India’s recycling volume at 2.99 million gross tonnes in 2025, up nearly 60 per cent from 1.86 million in 2024. Gross tonnage measures a ship’s enclosed volume rather than its weight. India’s share of the global market rose to 35.4 per cent from 30.1 per cent a year earlier. That means a little over one in every three tonnes of ships recycled worldwide was handled in India.

Most of that work happens in one place. The Alang-Sosiya yard in Gujarat, set up in 1982-83, handles 98 per cent of India’s ship recycling. It has 128 operational plots with a capacity of 4.5 million light displacement tonnes (LDT) a year. More than 8,900 ships have been recycled there since it began. Alang produces about 3.5 million metric tonnes of steel a year from this recycled material, according to the Press Information Bureau (PIB).

What is behind the rise

The ministry credits policy reforms and ease-of-doing-business measures. India enacted the Recycling of Ships Act, 2019, aligning its yards with the Hong Kong International Convention on safe and environmentally sound ship recycling, which it ratified that year. The government has also given Rs 53.5 crore in assistance to modernise yards. Ports Minister Sarbananda Sonowal said the result reflects sustained reforms, industry effort and adherence to international environmental and safety standards.

The Convention has been in force globally since June 2025.

What this means for India

Alang-Sosiya gives India a large share of a global industry that turns end-of-life ships into steel. The ministry says the yard directly employs about 15,000 workers and indirectly supports over 1.5 lakh people. The next test is safety and compliance. Independent monitors say implementation on the ground has been uneven, so injury and accident data will show whether the ranking comes with safer yards.

Safeguards and what comes next

Civil society groups say the picture is more mixed. The NGO Shipbreaking Platform notes that no Indian yard has yet been formally authorised under the Hong Kong Convention, though more than 100 plots in Alang-Sosiya hold private Statements of Compliance. Across South Asia, the group counted 11 worker deaths in 2025 and believes another 62 workers were injured, while noting that reporting is opaque. Those figures cover Bangladesh, India and Pakistan together, not India alone.

The government plans to expand. Reports say it plans to invest about ₹20,000-25,000 crore over the next decade to raise India’s global share from roughly 35 per cent to nearly 50 per cent. The plan would almost double Alang’s capacity to around 9 million LDT. It would lift annual throughput from 500-600 vessels to about 1,000-1,200. The shipping association BIMCO estimates that more than 16,000 vessels will be recycled worldwide over the next decade.

Shipowners, especially in Europe, increasingly prefer compliant yards. Industry voices say certifications alone are not enough and must be matched by consistent day-to-day standards on safety, environmental management and human rights. The strength of that daily practice will decide whether the expanded capacity earns lasting trust.