HITESH Vyas, Middle East vice-president and green recycling coordinator at the Singapore-based cash buyer Wirana, was not surprised at the outcome from his visit to the Posidonia exhibition in early June. Surrounded by owners and charterers who are doing well in the current market, he found few who wanted to talk about ship recycling.

But that may change. Launching a year-long, six-episode series of podcasts focusing on the sector, he draws on Wirana’s four-decade history and his own 12 years’ experience of this cyclical business and predicts that “we are towards the end of a slow supply of tonnage”.

Nonetheless, those shipowners who have sold to recyclers recently have secured good prices: so good that recycling yards are often making a loss at the moment, he says, and explains in the podcast what motivates yards to take on apparently unrewarding work.

Each podcast in the series will include both market insights and commentaries about regulatory and other developments. In this first episode, Vyas reflects on the overhead costs that yards have to cover, which contribute to their financial considerations, and contrasts it with the other side of the balance: “shipowners are having a great time, both in the freight market [and] at the ship recycling stage”.

Looking ahead, he believes that the recycling market over the next two months will pivot around the outcome of the situation in the Hormuz Strait. In the podcast, which was recorded shortly before the US and Iran signed their Memorandum of Understanding, he describes some potential market scenarios depending on the eventual outcome of the talks over the subsequent 60 days of negotiations.

He also reflects on the IMO’s Hong Kong Convention for Safe and Environmentally Sound Recycling of Ships, which marks its first anniversary on June 26, two days after this podcast is published. “The world needs to accept that the Hong Kong Convention (HKC) is the only global ship recycling regulation today,” Vyas says.

He also reports on the work of BIMCO’s Ship Recycling Alliance, which brings together ship recyclers and shipowners to ensure “a sound and consistent implementation” of the convention. Vyas chairs one of its working groups, so he is able to offer his listeners a first-hand assessment of the alliance’s work and the convention’s impact on the market, both now and for the future.

His remarks set out the foundations for the rest of his series, with the next scheduled for publication on August 24, by when many of the market and other forces he discusses in this podcast will inspire further insights into this vital sector.