KR Ship Recycling Yard receives green certificate

KR Ship Recycling Yard, a sister concern of KR Group, has received "Green Yard" certificate recently, the authorities announced yesterday.

Meanwhile, Norway Ambassador to Bangladesh Espen Rikter-Svendsen visited the yard situated in Kumira area of Chattogram's Sitakunda upazila yesterday as part of his programme to visit all the four green yards in Bangladesh.

During his visit, the ambassador said, "Norway's ship owners will sell scrap ships to buyers in Bangladesh soon as the country's yards are gradually converting to green yards in compliance with the Hong Kong convention."

To turn the yard into a green one, KR had to receive the recognition as a green shipyard from the two different international certification authorities of the ship breaking sector.

"We received a certificate from Bureau Veritas, a French company specialised in testing, inspection and certification, and another from Nippon Kaiji Kyokai, a ship classification society of Japan, gradually, " said Taslim Uddin, owner of the yard.

Earlier, only three yards of the country received the certificate.

According to Hong Kong International Convention for the safe and environmentally sound recycling of ships adopted in 2009, a green yard refers to a yard that is compliant with the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) Guidelines for ship breaking.

Currently, over 200 employees are working at the newly turned green yard.

The yard was established in 2012 on three acres of land and it produces an average 1.2 lakh tonnes of scrap material per year through dismantling scrap ships, the authorities said.