CMT’s mission is to make ship dismantling circular, safe and competitive. The main instrument to achieving that mission is the CMT yard, an automated and technology driven circular ship dismantling yard. At the CMT yard, innovative technologies are combined into one continuous process, breaking a ship down to its individual components, ready for reuse. The beating heart of that process, is the Diacutron. An enormous wire saw that cuts ocean ships like a loaf of bread is sliced. And now, the Diacutron is being developed and tested in Rotterdam.

When founder Frank Geerdink visited the Alang beaching yard over a decade ago, he was shocked at what he saw. How was it possible that there was no alternative to this destructive process yet? Back on the plane, he immediately started sketching. The key to the solution to him was clear, it had to be a technology driven solution. To take humans out of the most dangerous parts of ship breaking, to reclaim the materials in such a way that they can be reused at the highest value level, and to dramatically increase the number of ships to be dismantled yearly.

The first step to realizing a full size CMT yard where ships of 300 meters and more can be dismantled, is to develop the core technology on a smaller scale. This is exactly what CMT International is doing together with partners in the project ‘Circular Ship Dismantling Rotterdam’, supported by the Kansen voor West grant of the European Union. First is the development and testing of the wire saw, with results expected in Q4 of 2024. Building on that test, CMT will continue on a journey of simultaneously developing the first full size pilot yard, and further developing and testing the other technologies that make up the full solution.