World Trade Centre Scrap Sails for India, China
By Pete Harrison and Manuela Badawy
LONDON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Steel from the wreckage of the World Trade Center is destined for a new life in India and China, where it has been sent for recycling and is set to end up in new construction projects.
One firm taking steel from the huge project to clear Ground Zero is New York's Metals Management.
Company president Alan Ratner said it had bought 70,000 tons of scrap from the ruined twin towers, some of which had been shipped across the Pacific to Southeast Asia.
Ratner said four or five vessels had already sailed from New York with consignments of scrap. Among them are the ``very dense'' steel girders from Ground Zero, which could finally yield 250,000 to 400,000 tons of scrap for recycling, he said.
The World Trade Center's broken steel outer skeleton comprised of steel beams up to two feet thick. Its guts yielded many tons of steel office furniture and filing cabinets, to be baled into large cubes for shipping.
Mobile shearing machines gnaw through some of the smaller girders, but the beams from the base of the towers are some of the heaviest ever used, and must be seared through with torches. Sources in Chennai port, India said two 33,000 ton consignments had already arrived, a third was on its way and a fourth was soon to arrive at India's West Coast port of Kandla.
The cargo ship Borzna arrived in Chennai at the start of January and its scrap consignment, a third of which came from the twin towers, should be unloaded by Thursday, they said.
A second ship, the Shen Qua Hai, is also being unloaded and should be leaving in 10 days time.
Shipping sources said the beams were so dense that a full load would probably break through the bottom of the ship, so they would have to sail as part cargoes.
The demand for 20 or so crane-fitted ships to do the job could well be enough to boost the freight market, they said. Sources in India said the scrap had been bought at $120 per ton and would be recycled into ingots, which would be sold on to various industries, including construction.
Not all of the World Trade Center's carcass is sailing for Asia. Metal Management's Ratner said the City of New York will keep some mangled metal for a memorial to those killed on September 11.