Posted on 03/11/2025 7:07:33 AM PDT by dennisw
“and the math... 200 x $4 a day times 90 days... that $72,000 in labor. someone is making some money...”
There is a boss who loves right on the premises and in similar shabby conditions. The men have free meals and housing. So this boss is doing well. Then there are probably 2 layers of bosses above him before you get to the owners of this ship dismantling business. India is a major steel maker. Maybe they buy scrap steel from Pakistani beach dismantlers.
Grok AI>>>>
At Gadani, a small coastal town in Balochistan, Pakistan, workers engage in one of the world’s most labor-intensive and hazardous industries: ship-breaking. The Gadani ship-breaking yard, stretching along a 10-kilometer beach, has been a major hub for dismantling old ships since the 1970s, turning obsolete vessels into scrap steel that feeds both domestic and regional steel industries. Massive cargo ships, tankers, and container vessels, having reached the end of their operational lives, are run aground on the beach during high tide.
Once stranded, teams of workers—often numbering in the hundreds per ship—descend upon them with basic tools like blowtorches, hammers, and crowbars, systematically tearing them apart. This gritty, hands-on process transforms maritime giants into manageable pieces of steel, ready for recycling into new products.
The work at Gadani is a testament to human endurance and ingenuity, but it comes at a steep cost. Workers, many of whom are migrant laborers from Pakistan’s poorer regions, face grueling conditions with minimal safety equipment. They cut through thick steel plates, often coated with toxic substances like asbestos, lead paint, and oil residues, under the blazing sun or in stormy weather. Accidents are frequent—fires from gas leaks, falls from heights, and crushing injuries from falling steel are all too common.
Despite these dangers, the yard remains active, driven by the global demand for affordable scrap steel and the economic necessity that pushes workers to take on such risks for wages as low as a few dollars a day. At its peak in the 1980s, Gadani was the world’s leading ship-breaking site, employing over 30,000 people, though its scale has since declined due to competition from India and Bangladesh.
The process of breaking down a ship at Gadani begins with stripping it of reusable components—cables, engines, furniture, and fittings—before the real dismantling starts. Workers use oxy-acetylene torches to slice through the hull and superstructure, reducing the ship to steel slabs that are then hauled off the beach by cranes or manual labor. A single large ship, like a supertanker, can yield up to 50,000 tons of steel, taking months to fully dismantle. This steel is prized for its quality, as ships are built with high-grade, durable materials to withstand ocean conditions.
Once collected, the scrap is sold to local steel mills or exported, often to nearby countries like India, where steelmakers like Tata Steel and others rely on such materials to feed their furnaces. The informal nature of the trade means much of this steel moves through middlemen, obscuring its final destination.
Environmental and regulatory challenges cast a long shadow over Gadani’s operations. Unlike modern ship-recycling facilities in Europe or North America, which adhere to strict environmental standards, Gadani’s beach dismantling is largely unregulated. Toxic waste from ships—oil sludge, heavy metals, and chemicals—often spills into the sand and sea, polluting the coastline and threatening marine life.
International conventions like the Basel Convention and the Hong Kong Convention aim to curb such practices, but enforcement in Pakistan remains weak. Efforts to modernize the yard, such as introducing safer cutting technologies or waste management systems, have been slow due to cost and a lack of political will. For now, Gadani persists as a raw, chaotic symbol of the global recycling economy, where profit and survival outweigh ecological concerns.
Despite its decline from its heyday, Gadani still plays a vital role in Pakistan’s economy and the global scrap steel market. In 2023, Pakistan dismantled around 50-60 ships annually at Gadani, producing hundreds of thousands of tons of steel, though this is a fraction of the output from rival yards like Alang in India or Chittagong in Bangladesh. The scrap steel from Gadani helps fuel Pakistan’s domestic steel industry, supporting construction and manufacturing, while surplus is exported, potentially reaching India’s steel-hungry furnaces. For the workers, the yard offers a lifeline, however precarious, in a region with few other job opportunities. At Gadani, the breaking down of old ships into scrap steel is more than an industrial process—it’s a stark reflection of the interplay between human labor, economic necessity, and the relentless churn of global resource cycles.
environmental impact details
Alang ship-breaking yard
Kyuss - El Rodeo
https://youtu.be/KVm8G0ipETc?si=CydPIAJhJhHJn0f3
is how i learned about this topic years ago,, interesting
after its all said and done, I wonder what the bottom line profit is...
in the video I seen some of those ships beach themselves under their own power so obviously the engines still work. The hulls must be showing signs of weakness to scrap the ships if the engines still operate.
” The hulls must be showing signs of weakness to scrap the ships if the engines still operate.”
Very much FWIW, but in this video they say ships get too rusted after 30 years so must be scrapped / recycled.
There is you tube video about a huge Japanese made container ship that broke in half, after just 5 years sailing. The hulls steel plates accumulated too many stress fractures. Plates that were thinner to save weight.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAV3TYtLhkg
Exactly. And demolition also provides good jobs for illiterate wogs.
This is why I love FR! Thanks!
I went to Googlemaps satellite view, and you can actually see a ship aground on the beach with the encampment nearby called Fatima Enterprises.
This is why I love FR, learn something new every day!
Very cool - thanks!
AWESOME! LOL
They are wearing their safety sandals 😜
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