The Hong Kong International Convention for the Safe and Environmentally Sound Recycling of Ships, 2009 (the Ship Recycling Convention or the Hong Kong Convention) was adopted in May 2009. Although the Convention has not yet entered into force, Japan acceded and the governmental and ministerial ordinances were stipulated. Consequently, international certificate on inventory of hazardous materials (IHM) is able to be issued to Japanese flagged ships voluntarily prior to the convention entering into force.

Accordingly, ClassNK has launched to carry out the survey equivalent to the convention in the following manner until the convention enters into force. (This survey is not compulsory, but voluntary)

1 Initial survey
(1) The initial survey is to verify whether part I of the IHM is consistent with the arrangements, structure and equipment of the ship.

(2) Approval plans and documents: The following plans and documents are to be submitted to ClassNK Ship Management Systems Department.
(i) Part I of the IHM
(ii) Material declaration (MD) and Supplier's Declaration of Conformity (SDoC)
(iii) Other documents deemed necessary by the Society

Besides the above listed documents, the following documents are to be additionally submitted in cases where Regulation 5.2 of the convention is applied.
(i) Visual/ sampling check plan
(ii) Visual/ sampling check result

(3) Survey: The following items are to be confirmed at Initial Survey.
(i) The confirmation of the documents specified in above (2)
(ii) The confirmatory survey based in above (i)
(iii) All of the following are to be included on the survey specified in above (ii)
(a) The presence of materials to be considered for the Part I of the IHM
(b) The documentation is not specific; or
(c) Materials of uncertain composition were used.

(To be continued)