Gadani Ship Breaking Yard

Gadani currently has an annual capacity of breaking up to 125 ships of all sizes, including supertankers, with a combined LDT of 1,000,000 tons. Although Gadani ranks as the world's third largest ship breaking yard after Alang and Chittagong in terms of volume, it is the world's leading ship breaking yard in terms of efficiency. At Gadani, a ship with 5,000 LDT is broken within 30 to 45 days, whereas in India and Bangladesh it takes, on average, more than six months to break a vessel of the same size. ==History==

Ship breaking was conducted in Gadani on rare occasions before Pakistan became a sovereign country. The activity of ship breaking at Gadani greatly increased in the 1960s. In 1978, the city of Gadani was designated by the Government of Pakistan as a port. It was described as the largest such yard in the world. However, increased competition from rival ship-breaking yards in Alang, India, and Chittagong, Bangladesh, coupled with relatively high import duty for decommissioned vessels, led to a steep decline in Gadani's output. ==Disasters==

2016 Aces fire On 1 November 2016, at least 26-31 workers were killed and 58 wounded as a result of gas cylinder explosions on a ship being scrapped, the floating production storage and offloading oil tanker Aces (, built 1982 as Mobil Flinders), causing a huge fire. Reportedly more than 100 people were dismantling a tanker in the yard. Some 30 other workers were also reported missing. On November 13, 2017 it was reported that another fire broke out on the same vessel. NGO Shipbreaking Platform reported that Aces had laid untouched at the same yard a year after the explosion. The Pakistan Department of Environment gave permission for work to resume on her recycling. On the first day that the breaking recommenced, a fire broke out again, as the oil residue inside the tanker had not been removed. == See also ==