Ship Recycling Gets Its First Sustainability Report as Priya Blue Sets 2025 Baseline

in International Shipping News 01/09/2026

For most of its modern history, the ship recycling industry has been described by others rather than by itself. Satellite imagery, NGO investigations, inspection findings and documentary crews have typically shaped the story of what happens to a vessel at the end of its life, often from an adversarial perspective and usually without the industry’s own numbers presented publicly.

That is beginning to change. Priya Blue Group, which operates three HKC certified ship recycling facilities at Alang, has published its Sustainability Report for the calendar year 2025. The report says it is the first sustainability report prepared by a company operating within the ship recycling industry. Beyond the significance of being first, the document reflects a growing willingness among recycling facilities to measure performance, disclose results and use that information as a basis for improvement.

The report has been prepared in accordance with the Global Reporting Initiative Standards 2021 and covers Priya Blue’s facilities: V1, V2 and 169M. It sits alongside the group’s certified management systems for quality, environmental management, occupational health and safety, and ship recycling, while mapping material sustainability topics against the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Importantly, 2025 is presented as the baseline year rather than an end point. As the report states: “We are learning what we know – and can thus manage and improve upon – and what we don’t know, yet, and this will be addressed going forwards.”

Captain Simon Bennett, Global Sustainability Advisor to Priya Blue Group, said the company was proud to publish the report for calendar year 2025, which it believes to be the first sustainability report prepared by a company operating within the ship recycling sector.

“We believe a company in a high-scrutiny industry like ship recycling has more reason than most to produce a Sustainability Report. Our report isn’t just a communications exercise; it is a strategic tool for improving credibility and risk management,” Bennett said.

He added: “A Sustainability Report is a way to show transparently, and with robust, externally assured data – rather than merely claim – that the company is operating responsibly. We are shifting the narrative from ‘we say we’re safe’ to ‘here is the evidence.’”

Bennett said the report was not intended as an internal, self-congratulatory document. “The very first step, before we wrote a single sentence, was to talk to our stakeholders about what was material to them. We then assessed where we stood in relation to that materiality. Many issues we already had in hand, but naturally there are gaps.”

According to Bennett, that gap analysis will help shape the group’s environmental, social and governance initiatives in the years ahead and support its ambition to maintain a leadership position in the sector.

The disclosures cover energy and greenhouse gas emissions, waste, water and effluent management, workforce development, health and safety, community initiatives, governance and ethics. The report says all data and statements were externally verified and assured by an independent body before publication.

The report also sets measurable environmental, social and governance targets through 2028, including intensity-based targets intended to show improvement independently of changes in recycling volumes.

One of the more notable additions is an internally developed Ship Recycling Circularity Index (SRCI). The methodology separates recycling from direct reuse, applies a contamination adjustment to recovered material and gives additional recognition to equipment and components that can return directly to productive use rather than being remelted. Priya Blue says the index is an internal performance measure and is not directly comparable with other externally standardised circularity indices.

The approach is consistent with broader operational changes at the group’s facilities. The report describes investments including high-capacity barge-crane handling designed to move dismantled blocks directly onto impermeable surfaces, structured drainage systems, a transition from LPG cylinders to piped natural gas, magnetic lifting systems intended to move workers further away from hazards, and the gradual digitalisation of inspection, monitoring, inventory and compliance records.

Taken together, those disclosures matter because ship recycling is entering a new reporting phase after years in which compliance was often discussed mainly through audits, incidents and regulatory enforcement. A baseline report does not replace those tools, but it can add a structured record of what a yard says it is measuring, what it has already embedded in operations and where future comparisons will be made.

The significance of the report extends beyond a single group.

The Hong Kong Convention, which entered into force in June 2025, has established the international baseline for safe and environmentally sound ship recycling. For compliant facilities, the next question is increasingly what can be built on top of that foundation.

One possible next layer is the open reporting of robustly assured data and incident or accident investigation results. HKC compliance establishes the systems and controls expected of a responsible recycling facility. Transparent sustainability reporting can then help show how those systems are performing over time, where further strategic investment is needed and whether environmental, safety and social indicators are actually improving, and by how much.

That should not become a race to produce the most polished report. The opportunity now is for more recycling facilities to begin measuring their own performance, publishing credible data, acknowledging gaps and learning from approaches being tested elsewhere in the sector.

If more yards do that, methodologies should improve, indicators should become more comparable and good practices can travel faster between facilities. HKC has established the base. What the industry builds above it through better measurement, greater transparency and continuous improvement could define the next stage of responsible ship recycling.

Priya Blue Group said it actively invites and welcomes comments on the Sustainability Report as it seeks to meet, and surpass, stakeholder expectations in subsequent years. Source: Priya Blue Group