Analysis of COVID-19 Pandemic Effect on Ship Dismantling and Recycling Industry: An Assessment on Türkiye

The average age of the global merchant fleet has been declining with the increasing number of new ship constructions and dismantled ships. Although a noteworthy part of ship dismantling and recycling (SDR) facilities have been performed in Asian countries, such as India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, SDR facilities have also been increasing in Türkiye. SDR facilities provide substantial economic income and employment opportunities. However, SDR facilities should have been performed in a certain systematic framework by taking necessary precautions since toxic substances from dismantled ships affect the environment and employees’ health. That’s why maritime authorities make an effort to sustain the SDR facilities in the best way in the sense of safety, health, and environment through the European Union (EU) Ship Recycling Regulation (SRR), Basel Convention, and Hong Kong Convention (HKC). In this paper, the global SDR facilities have been evaluated in terms of ship types and their gross tonnages (GTs) over the past 5 years among the leading countries. The number, type, economic life span, steel weight, and light displacement tonnage (LDT) of dismantled ships have been analyzed in Türkiye, especially throughout the COVID-19 pandemic process. To determine the most effective year in terms of SDR, the weighted aggregated sum product assessment (WASPAS) method has been utilized based on scrap steel price, LDT, economic life span, number of dismantled ships, and steel structure weight coefficient of the ship by maritime experts. The year 2017 has been highlighted as the most effective year with a .909 rank value in the last 5 years. In addition to analysis results, the largest amount of scrap steel has been acquired from dry cargo ships, which is the most dismantled ship type under data getting from the SDR facilities in Türkiye. Temporary bans on cruises due to the COVID-19 pandemic have caused more than triple increments in the number of passenger ships (PS) dismantling. This paper will be a quite notable resource for experts, academics, and industry stakeholders in order to explore and compare the SDR process.