One of the world’s biggest shipbreaking facilities is located in Pakistan at the Gadani shipbreaking yard. In the world, there are various kinds of ship graveyards. The Gadani ship-breaking yard is situated about 25 miles or 40 kilometers northwest of Karachi, which is Pakistan’s largest city. The Gadani Yard is the third-largest shipbreaking yard in the world.
It has a total of about 132 ship-breaking plots. Gadani was founded in the 1980s and once held the title of the world’s largest ship-breaking yard. It employed over 30,000 people directly. However, now it is facing increasing competition in recent years from newer yards on the subcontinent.
Gadani is still the third-largest Yard, but it is only about a fifth as big as it was in the 1980s. Where it employed about 30,000 people in the 1980s, it now employs only about 6,000 people.
Ships go to death at this enormous ship graveyard. Due to this about a million tons of steel is salvaged each year. The Gadani has a capacity of around 125 ships of all sizes, including supertankers. This means that at peak, at least 125 ships can be scrapped at this massive Yard.
A 5,000 LDT ship is typically broken up in 30 to 45 days at this Pakistani Yard.
This is much quicker than the six months it takes in the other enormous scrap yards in India and Bangladesh. The old ships are run up at this Yard and broken up on the beach. The complete disassembly of many of the hollow skeletons of the ships they once were can take months. Most of the ship parts are disassembled and used as scrapes for other materials.
However, some are given a second chance at life. This is because the workers salvaged them to use in the electrical or mechanical systems of more modern ships. The three nations that make up the subcontinent, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and India, are home to the three biggest shipbreaking yards.
Despite the fact that these are industrial work zones and not tourist destinations, there are many people who visit this Yard. Many tourists have been able to enter and take breathtaking photos of this mind-blowing scrapyard of the world.