Cruise ship disposal revealed: From ‘closely governed’ UK to ‘unregulated’ yards in Asia

“If that happens, as per the cruise ships, you’re going to have all sorts of other classifications of merchant vessels surplus to requirement.

“And whether that’s oil tankers, container ships or cargo ships I think what we’re going to see is a period where there’s going to be some rationalisation in the market.

“There’s going to be a lot of lay-ups of ships which tends to happen when vessels finish their useful life and go straight to the scrap yard but in the past, in periods where there has been a downturn in shipping, like the last recession, we saw a lot of ships across the board being laid up in safe anchorages.

“Potentially hundreds of ships just sat off in safe anchorages – sat off the coast.”

But dangerous ship disposal is more common in Asia than it is in Europe.

“It’s closely governed from an EU perspective but when you start looking at South Asia, in particular Alang [in Bangladesh], they say that they are green recycling yards, and they’re just not.