Shipbreaking (also called ship demolition) is the process of dismantling ships for scrap metal and recycling or disposal. Today the shipbreaking process takes place in a facility called ship breaking yard, while in the past scrapping ships took place in major port cities worldwide, and mostly in those of highly industrialized countries (UK, USA, Germany, Italy).
Ship dismantling includes numerous manual procedures and entirely excludes automation solutions, resulting in substantially higher labor costs.
This is the primary reason today the largest yards to be in India (Alang), Pakistan (Gadani), Bangladesh (Chittagong) and China - countries with extremely low labor costs and almost no environmental laws.