The Hong Kong Convention (HKC) entered into force on 26 June 2025, no longer giving shipowners a free pass on end-of-life tonnage. The convention sets a new compliance baseline: an Inventory of Hazardous Materials (IHM), certified surveys, authorised recycling facilities, and a ship-specific recycling plan. This is real progress; however, it does not provide the full legal picture.
HKC and the ship recycling compliance baseline
Even with the HKC in force, the EU Ship Recycling Regulation (EU SRR) and the Basel Convention / EU Waste Shipment rules still apply. In practice, these regimes create parallel obligations that sit alongside HKC.
EU‑flagged ships must still recycle at facilities on the European List, which the European Commission approves for meeting strict environmental, health, and safety standards under EU law. Owners must also maintain Inventories of Hazardous Materials not only for EU ships heading for recycling, but for new EU ships and non‑EU ships calling at EU ports. Under the Basel and EU waste legislation, authorities can still classify an end‑of‑life ship containing hazardous substances as hazardous waste, triggering export restrictions to many non‑OECD destinations.
Enforcement trends and personal liability in ship recycling compliance
This is where ship recycling compliance becomes personal. The risk for owners, managers, and brokers is no longer theoretical. You can be fully certified under HKC yet end up on the wrong side of Basel / EU waste law. Consequences include detention, investigation, and prosecution if the chosen recycling route breaches national rules.
The regulatory landscape is complex, but the direction of travel is not: regulators are moving from guidance to enforcement, and the EU has been clear that it wants to close loopholes such as flag‑switching, weak IHM practice, and other tactics used to route vessels to non‑compliant beaching yards outside the EU system.
When selling an end‑of‑life ship does not end legal responsibility
Some may still think “we sold the ship to a cash buyer, so it is no longer our problem.” However, recent European enforcement says otherwise. Courts have looked at the substance of the transaction — not just the paperwork — and have been willing to follow responsibility back up the chain where the end destination was obvious and the deal helped facilitate an illegal export for beaching.
In the Netherlands, a series of high-profile prosecutions became a landmark warning shot. A Rotterdam court found that multiple vessels were already deemed “waste” when they left for their final voyage, because the commercial intent was demolition. Companies and individual directors faced significant consequences, including fines and temporary management bans. The matter ultimately ended in a widely reported multi-million-euro settlement.
Further North, Norwegian authorities have also pursued a major offshore owner over the export of two tankers to South Asia for beaching. This resulted in a substantial regulatory penalty, NOK 8 million and a six-month prison sentence that was later reported as accepted by the company. This is not a compliance footnote — it is a board-level warning about what regulators think “end-of-life” responsibility looks like.
What end‑of‑life ship recycling compliance now requires
The uncomfortable truth is simple: if the documents say “repair”, “further trading”, or “sale to a third party”, but the commercial reality points to demolition at a non‑compliant yard, regulators will focus on the facts. If those facts show knowledge, facilitation, concealment, or a deliberate attempt to sidestep the rules (for example through flag‑switching or intermediaries), the consequences can be serious: criminal charges, detention, profit confiscation, management bans — and in some cases prison. The EU’s environmental crime framework is only raising the stakes further, with tougher sanctions for individuals and potentially very large corporate fines.
So what is the takeaway for shipowners? End‑of‑life compliance is no longer an ESG topic. It is a hard legal risk. If you cannot clearly evidence where the ship is going, who is really buying it, what condition it is in, whether it is already legally “waste”, and whether the chosen facility is compliant under the rules that actually apply (flag, last port calls, transaction structure), then you are not just selling an asset. You may be exposing the transaction — and potentially yourself — to environmental crime scrutiny.
In ship recycling, “we didn’t know” is becoming a very expensive defence.
