Published on Jul 21, 2015
The Indian beach of Alang near Bhavnagar in Western Guajarat State is one of the largest ship breaking yards in the world. At any one time more than a hundred vessels from small cruisers to massive oil tankers can be seen scattered in pieces across a five kilometre stretch of the shore. Working a gruelling seventy hours a week in soaring temperatures crews of Indian workers have turned the place into a vast and eerie ship’s cemetery.
This is an interesting business, the country doesn’t have to mine the iron from the ground, or cut down thousands thousands of acres of woodland because they can recover the wood and iron from the ships. The profit margins are huge, but the cost from the humans becoming hurt or ill from cancer is huge. They are around poison gases all day long, asbestos ect.
Workers are paid three dollars a day for a 70 hour week. Zero health insurance. I’ve watched other videos that say india chops up half of all the retired ships in the world, as well as our US naval ships. They beach the ships on their beaches and chop them up right there.
India has coastlines that are extremely easy to beach these ships, giving india a huge advantage in this business, huge inviromental issues though, but nobody gives a damn.
Something like 300 to 500 ships a year are chopped up in india. Huge profits sending the iron and wood all around the world. The copper and brass metal recovery is also huge.