EWD Benli Recycling & Co. KG has become the first company in Germany to receive a permit to recycle ships, industrial turbines, and offshore wind turbines. The company specializes in the recycling of old ships, such as small coastal and near-shore units, smaller passenger ships, or industrial and offshore facilities.
“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,” said Lower Saxony’s Environment Minister Christian Meyer.
“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. “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.”
The permit covers the recycling of government vessels in non-commercial use (naval and government vessels), inland waterway vessels, coastal vessels, and seagoing vessels” and encompasses all steps of ship recycling, including the subsequent dismantling and depollution of pollutants.
EWD belongs to the network of the Bremerhaven-based Benli Group and has created recycling joint venture with Umweltkanzlei Beratungs- und Prüfgesellschaft mbH and ReLog GmbH, a company specializing in the planning and implementation of industrial dismantling projects and ship, engine, and aircraft recycling.
