Where are we in the ship life cycle? An index of countries' position across shipbuilding, ownership, registration and recycling, and Türkiye's end-of-life specialisation, 2014–2025
Gemi yaşam döngüsünün neresindeyiz? Ülkelerin inşa, sahiplik, bayrak ve geri dönüşüm konumunu ölçen bir endeks ve Türkiye'nin yaşam sonu uzmanlaşması, 2014–2025
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Abstract
Shipbuilding, ownership, registration and recycling are studied separately in the literature; there is no tool that shows on a single scale in which stage of a ship's life cycle a country specialises. This study proposes a ship life-cycle position index inspired by the upstreamness measure of the global value chain literature and applies it, together with a cross-stage balance measure, to 38 countries. It also decomposes the change in a country's recycling volume into market-size and market-share effects, measures the cyclicality of recycling and tests whether Türkiye's market position broke in 2019. The data are UNCTAD's 2014–2025 shipbuilding and ship recycling series together with fleet ownership and registration data. Türkiye's position index rose from 3.30 to 3.61; after Bangladesh, Pakistan and India, Türkiye is the fourth most end-of-life-specialised country and the most balanced across stages within this group. While world recycling volume fell from 22.6 million GT to 8.5 million GT, Türkiye's share rose from 4.1% to 12.2%: the market contraction took 0.96 million GT from Türkiye and the share gain added 1.06 million GT. Türkiye's volume relative to South Asia roughly doubled after 2019, and its volume was the least volatile series among the major recycling countries. In shipbuilding, its world share remained around 0.2%. Türkiye is strong at the end of the ship's life cycle and weak at its beginning.
Keywords
Ship recycling; Shipbuilding; Life cycle; Position index; LMDI decomposition; Structural break; Türkiye
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