Page 24: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (May 2021)

GREEN SHIP RECYCLING

Watch the interview with

Dr. Sharma @ bit.ly/3xNvAGc

GMS

During the Pandemic

Ship Scrapping Prices Soar

Dr. Anil Sharma is a wealth of knowledge on ship scrapping, having started

GMS 25 years ago, getting into the business of buying and disposing of old

U.S. MarAd and Russian navy ships as a sideline while teaching as a college professor in Maryland. Today his company is dominant in the ? eld, and in the last year he has seen an unprecedented 70% run up on ship scrap prices, approaching $500 per ton. He weighs in on ship scrapping trends and direction.

By Greg Trauthwein y Dr. Anil Sharma’s estimation, GMS is the world’s The ship disposal business, like maritime itself, is highly dominant player in the business of buying ships and cyclical. Today in maritime, both the container shipping and offshore assets for recycling, by number of ships, the dry bulk sectors are enjoying strong years, so ship scrap-

Babout one-third of the world’s annual transactions; ping activity in those two categories will be little to none. rising to 40% if measured by lightweight tons. “We tend to do Conversely, the tanker, the cruise and the offshore sectors are big ships, big projects,” said Dr. Sharma. “In terms of annual all being ‘punished’ and ship scrapping activity is picking up number of deals, the highest we have done is 300 plus ships in speed, particularly in the offshore sector. one year … about one ship a day, and our lowest is around 150 There are many factors that determine the life cycle of a ships. So (for GMS) it moves between 150 to 250 (ships per ship, and while life-cycles can vary greatly by sector, conven- year) depending on how bad the world economy is, depending tional wisdom suggests 20 to 25 years of service yields a fairly on which sector is being punished.” good return on investment. But life cycles change, and today 24 Maritime Reporter & Engineering News • May 2021

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