Germany has its first green ship recycling facility

August 21, 2025, by Naida Hakirevic Prevljak

For the first time, it will be possible to recycle vessels in Germany rather than sending them to South Asia for demolition.

EWD Benli Recycling, part of Emden-based shipyard Emden Werft und Dock (EWD), received necessary permits from the Oldenburg State Trade Supervisory Office (GAA Oldenburg) earlier this year.

The facility will be dismantling seagoing vessels, inland waterway vessels, coasters, as well as passenger ships and ferries. In addition, it will be able to dismantle offshore wind turbines and industrial plants. As Björn Sommer, one of the two Managing Directors, explained, the facility will be able to dismantle anything that can enter the Port of Emden through the sea lock.

On August 18, 2025, Lower Saxony’s Environment Minister Christian Meyer met with Sommer and Sebastian Jeanvré to learn more about ship recycling in Emden. As informed, the facility is currently processing several inquiries.

“I am very pleased that the Port of Emden can now plan and build with a future in mind, so that ships can finally be recycled sustainably here and not in distant countries,” Meyer stressed.

Specifically, the received permit covers the recycling of “government vessels in non-commercial use” (naval and government vessels), inland and coastal ships, as well as seagoing vessels. It encompasses all steps of the ship recycling process, including the subsequent dismantling and ‘depollution of pollutants’.

“In recent decades, we have had to witness environmental disasters because decommissioned industrial ships were shipped, particularly to Southeast Asia, where they rotted under the worst environmental and social conditions,” Meyer said.

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“Lower Saxony, together with Bremen, has therefore long advocated for domestic ship recycling and raw material extraction in Germany through the Conference of Environment Ministers, and global environmental regulations have finally been tightened with the Hong Kong Convention.”

In related news, The Association for Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering (VSM)—the voice of the German maritime industry—called last year on the government to review legal hurdles to (sustainable) ship recycling in Germany. As explained, the recycling of ships is now largely regulated at the European and international levels. However, in Germany, the professional recycling of aged ships has only been possible under ”disproportionately high hurdles”. German companies have faced major challenges in this regard in terms of licensing.

These legal hurdles should be reviewed and reduced to “a reasonable level”, the association warned back then.

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To remind, the Hong Kong International Convention for the safe and environmentally sound recycling of ships (HKC) officially entered into force on June 26, 2025. It marks a long-awaited turning point in how the world dismantles and recycles end-of-life vessels.

HKC represents a cradle-to-grave framework for the lifecycle of ships, from design and construction to operation and preparation of ships so as to facilitate safe and environmentally sound recycling.

The treaty also imposes strict rules on recycling infrastructure: only authorized facilities may dismantle ships.

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In Europe, rules regulating the sustainable dismantling of ships entered into force on November 20, 2013.