China Association Of National Shipbuilding Industry News

Regarded by many as the only gateway to the Asian maritime market, Marintec China 2013 has opened with due ceremony in Shanghai. With a significant increase in the floor area from 2011, this year's Marintec China covers more than 70,000 square metres. Taking up six exhibition halls, (Hall N1, N2, N3, W3, W4, W5) of the Shanghai New International Expo Centre (SNIEC), this year looks like being another record breaker. Sixteen national / regional pavilions from Austria, mainland China…

Chinese shipbuilders have been sailing toward bankruptcy in recent years, with China trying to consolidate the industry and bail it out from the woe of overcapacity. With delays in deliveries, order cancellations and price decreases for newly-built vessels, shipbuilding firms have been in a slump since late 2008, when the global financial system was in free fall, reports a recent Xihua Insight article. Statistics from China Association of National Shipbuilding Industry showed in the first half of 2013…

Hyundai Heavy Industries Co., the world’s biggest shipbuilder, plans to raise prices as demand for fuel-efficient vessels increases, reports the Japan News, citing Bloomberg, Singapore. Hyundai Heavy’s optimism helped drive up shares of South Korean shipbuilders Monday and contrasts with gloom over Chinese shipbuilders. A third of China’s yards may shut down in about five years as they struggle to win orders, an unamed industry group informed Japan Times. About 483 shipyards in China won $10.5 billion worth of orders in the first six months of this year, while 94 builders in South Korea got $18.5 billion, says the Japan Times citing Clarkson PLC.

One hundred and twenty leading executives from the major shipyards from Japan, Europe, China, Korea and the U.S. (JECKU) held a conference to exchange views on global economic development, supply and demand prospects as well as important technological and regulatory developments to improve the environmental performance of ships. The conference conclusions by Chairman Guanggin Zhang from the China Association of National Shipbuilding Industry highlighted that although confidence in the sector is slowly returning it would take still some time for the world shipbuilding industry to recover from the great impact of the world economic crisis.

Some of the maritime industry’s leading practitioners have urged global shipbuilders and suppliers not to let the current shipping boom distract them from what must remain their top priority: the construction of quality vessels. The comments, made at the 7th annual meeting of Lloyd’s Register Asia’s China National Committee (CNC), came as global shipbuilding capacity was set to eclipse 50 million compensated gross tons next year, raising concerns about the number of inexperienced yards entering the market and the growing pressure to find increasingly scarce skilled workers. Zhang Guangqin, the President of the China Association of National Shipbuilding Industry…

For those who have been in shipping for a decade or three, warnings of excess shipbuilding capacity will engender a sense of déja vu. First it was the Japanese, then the South Koreans and now, together with those, the Chinese. Clarkson Asia managing director Tim Huxley, addressing the International Union of Marine Insurance (IUMI) conference in Singapore this week, identified rapid shipyard capacity expansion in China, coupled with productivity increases at yard facilities in Japan and South Korea. Apart from a global economic crisis, excess capacity now posed the single biggest threat to the world’s shipbuilding industry, Huxley declared.

According to Asia Times, China's shipbuilding industry could be overextended in three years amid a booming global demand for new vessels. China's shipbuilding capacity will exceed 40 million deadweight tons (DWT) a year in 2010 if new shipyards planned by investors are completed, according to data from China Association of National Shipbuilding Industry. Ship production in China, the world's No 3 shipbuilding country after Japan and South Korea, climbed by 20% to 14.52 million. DWT last year from 2005, grabbing 19% of the world's total. Vessels for export amounted to 11.71 million DWT and the whole sector's profits more than doubled to 9.6 billion yuan (US$1.26 billion) in 2005.

The output of China's shipbuilding industry reached a record 14.52 million dwt in 2006, making up close to one-fifth of the global total for the same year, according to official statistics. The Commission of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense (CSTIND) announced on Tuesday that the output of 2006 was 20 percent higher than that of the previous year. According to the CSTIND, China's top two shipbuilding giants, the China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC) and the China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation (CSIC), reported annual output of 6.02 million dwt and 2.67 million dwt respectively. The rest of the market was covered by local shipbuilding companies.

According to Xinhua, the latest official blueprint on the China's shipbuilding industry urges the country to crank up efforts over the next five to ten years in order to shoulder its way into the elite club of independent mainstream shipbuilders. Key development targets enshrined in the National Medium-and Long-Term Plan of the Shipbuilding Industry include: ships to reach international levels of technological sophistication; annual output to hit 17 million deadweight tons (dwt); annual production capacity of medium- and low-speed ship diesel engines to reach 4.5million kw and 1,100 units respectively in order to meet domestic demand; more than 60 percent of ship equipment to be produced locally.

Rolls Royce has opened a new factory in Shanghai, China, to serve the world’s largest commercial shipbuilding market. Together with an existing facility in Korea, the factory forms a new production hub for north-east Asia enabling the company to supply shipyards with marine equipment at the point of manufacture – and open up new markets in the process. The Asian shipbuilding market is currently worth £19 billion annually and accounts for around 80 percent of all global construction. In 2004 new orders and deliveries reached record levels. Marine President Saul Lanyado, who officially opened the site yesterday, said: “This is a very exciting development for us and it opens up real opportunities to expand our business in Asia.