India’s ministry of steel has rejected proposal for using shipbreaking steel plates in making rebars, government officials said on Tuesday, December 26.
They said that rejection was based on recommendations of an expert committee which held that non-standardised product and absence of wide data as the reason for rejecting the proposal.
The committee in its report said that it could not conclude and devise a standard operating procedure in using shipbreaking plates without testing for chemical composition.
The committee members, who visited and collected samples from Gujarat’s Alang – Asia’s largest ship-breaking yard, reported that ship sides and bottom plates were subject to “different types of stress” in various directions. It also said the samples collected were not up to the mark in terms of being representative of hulls underwater, mid-ship or above-water level areas.