Wärtsilä, China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation (CSIC) and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) inaugurated their new, jointly owned, low-speed marine engine factory QMD in Qingdao, Shandong province. The state-of-the-art QMD factory features a modern welding shop, machine shop, assembly shop, and a testing shop, as well as facilities for heat treatment, blasting and painting. This engine production factory has automated equipment and processes, the flexible use of test beds, and the possibility to test two large engines at full load in parallel.
Civil construction of the factory started in May 2008. Within ten months, most of the construction work, the equipment installation and commissioning was completed. The factory became operational in March 2009. When totally completed, the factory will represent an overall investment of approximately $130m with a production capacity of 1 million BHP.
QMD’s orderbook is worth some $259.6m. The engines on order are mainly of the Wärtsilä RT-flex50, RT-flex60C and RT-flex82C, and Mitsubishi UEC50 engine types. These engines are all destined for Chinese shipyards.
"QMD is an important addition to the two-stroke engine building capacity in China, and in close cooperation with other Chinese engine builders, will contribute to increasing the supply of domestically built engines to Chinese shipyards," said Rien Hoogerbrugge, CEO of QMD.
The factory will have a total of around 500 employees by the end of this year. Located near the Haixiwan area on the Bohai Sea, the QMD factory is a part of the CSIC Haixiwan shipbuilding and repairing base, primarily serving China's shipbuilding industry, but is also able to export engines to other shipbuilding markets.
The first engine already produced at the new factory was a seven-cylinder Wärtsilä RT-flex60C, which successfully passed its factory acceptance test. The factory offers the full range of low-speed engines, with bore sizes from 50 cm upwards, of the Wärtsilä RTA and RT-flex engine types and the Mitsubishi UE engine types. It has the capacity to build engines of up to 96 cm bore. The manufactured engines will be branded as QMD-Wärtsilä and QMD-MHI engines respectively.
QMD manufactures and services low-speed marine diesel engines under license from Wärtsilä and Mitsubishi. Additionally, QMD will also focus on the research, development, and prototype manufacture of the new generation of energy-saving and environmentally friendly low-speed marine diesel engines, which use the advanced technologies of Wärtsilä and Mitsubishi.
The joint venture company Qingdao Qiyao Wartsila MHI Linshan Marine Diesel Co., Ltd. (QMD) is owned jointly by China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation (50%), Wärtsilä Corporation (27%) and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd (23%). The company was set up in 2006 to provide a supply of large marine engines, together with local technological expertise and support within the same field.
(www.wartsila.com)