A Belfast shipyard will recycle and dispose of the bow of the MSC Napoli, which was deliberately beached in Sidmouth, Devon in January this year. Following an explosive splitting of the ship, the bow is being towed around the Cornish Coast to the Irish Sea to the Harland and Wolff shipyard for recycling. The vessel was expected to arrive by 14 of August 2007, where the shipyard will work in partnership with waste and environmental management company Golder Associates to recover materials and dispose of waste.
On arrival, the ship will be placed in a 556 metre dry dock, where it will be decontaminated, deconstructed and materials collected for recycling offsite. The project is expected to take four to five months, after which a tendering process for companies to deal with the resulting material will begin. Harland and Wolff offer a high level of environmentally friendly disposal especially in comparison to other parts of the world, such as the Alang Coast in India, where ships are often beach-broken. This is a process where a ship is rammed onto a beach at high tide, then workers use their bare hands to rip it apart. Such workers also remove hazardous waste such as asbestos without protective clothing.
The salvage operation has so far cost more than £50 million. The MSC Napoli was damaged in storms in January 2007 while sailing from Antwerp to South Africa. The 62,000-ton vessel was carrying 3,500 tonnes of heavy fuel oil in tanks, along with around 2,300 containers. Over 100 of which went overboard with 58 washed ashore, leading to a scavenging and looting spree.
