After having been informed by the NGO Shipbreaking Platform and its member organisation Bellona that the TIDE CARRIER (now named HARRIER, aka EIDE CARRIER) had been sold for illegal, dirty and dangerous scrapping to a South Asian beaching facility, the Norwegian environmental authorities arrested the ship on Tuesday 5 April. The vessel is not allowed to leave Norway unless it is to sail to a ship recycling destination in line with international and European hazardous waste laws. According to the Norwegian Environment Agency, it is the first arrest of a vessel in Norway for the illegal export of hazardous waste.
The Platform had been informed already during the summer of 2015 that the ship was sold for scrap. Having been laid up for many years on the Norwegian west coast the Platform immediately contacted the Norwegian owners Eide Group to make them aware of the laws governing end-of-life ships and that exporting the vessel to a South Asian beaching yard would be in breach of the European Waste Shipment Regulation and the UN Basel Convention. Eide Group denied then that the vessel would be scrapped.
On 22 February 2017 the vessel attempted to leave Norway under a new name, flag and registered owner. Now called TIDE CARRIER, the ship had swapped its flag to that of Comoros and was registered under an anonymous St. Kitts and Nevis based post-box company, Julia Shipping – all solid indications that a cash buyer, a scrap dealer specialised in the trading of end-of-life ships to the South Asian beaching yards, was involved.