Container ship 'Wan Hai 503' sent for recycling, months after June 2025 explosion near Kerala: Why it matters

Months after the container ship Wan Hai 503 (IMO: 9294862) caught fire off the coast of Kerala on June 9, 2025, its owner, Wan Hai Lines, has reported that the vessel has been sent for recycling.

After emergency response and cargo clean-up procedures were completed at a port of refuge (POR) in the UAE's Jebel Ali in late December, the Singapore-flagged vessel was towed to a Dubai firm for recycling on January 12.

A POR is a port designated as a safe harbour for ships going through emergency situations.

"The Vessel was towed to Drydock World Dubai and successfully delivered to APT Global pursuant to a BIMCO Recycling Contract ... during the evening of 12 January 2026," Wan Hai Lines said.

APT Global will now recycle the Wan Hai 503 in line with the Hong Kong International Convention for the Safe and Environmentally Sound Recycling of Ships.

Back in June 2025, an explosion aboard the container ship had caused around 50 of the vessel's 650 containers to fall into the sea—around 40km west of Kerala's Kozhikode coast, in the Arabian Sea.

The Wan Hai 503 had come from Colombo to unload its cargo at Mumbai's Jawaharlal Nehru Port.

In the operations that followed, 18 of the ship's 22-member crew were saved, while putting out the fire aboard the vessel took days. Four people remain missing.

Rescue and relief operations involved the Indian Coast Guard (ICG) deploying three interceptor boats from Kochi and more teams from Beypore. The Navy also joined in with Dornier helicopters, while Wan Hai Lines sent salvage crews.

For a long time since the explosion, the ship remained a major cause for concern—as it had been carrying about 2,000 tonnes of fuel oil and 240 tonnes of diesel, in addition to 32.2 tonnes of nitrocellulose (stored in alcohol). 

So apart from the significant pollution concerns, the ship had also been drifting towards Kerala's coast, which would have caused a major problem, had it reached the shore.

Tugboats were used to pull the vessel away from the shore, from where firefighting operations could continue with reduced risk.

How the 'Wan Hai 503' disaster led to the development of the Indian Coast Guard's 'Samudra Pratap'

Notably, it was maritime accidents like the Wan Hai 503 explosion that led to the Indian Coast Guard (ICG) inducting the Samudra Pratap, its first Pollution Control Vessel (PCV) that is 75 per cent indigenously designed.

Delivered by Goa Shipyard Limited (GSL) to the ICG in late December, the Samudra Pratap is the first in a series of two PCVs (02 PCV Project) that the shipmaker developed to help the ICG combat oil spills at sea.

The other major maritime tragedy behind the development of the PCV was the submersion of the Liberian-flagged container ship MSC Elsa 3 (IMO: 9123221) in May 2025.

A number of its containers—many with hazardous materials like furnace oil and diesel—were removed from its shipwreck in October that year.