The Ship Maker News

Amazon Web Services (AWS), an Amazon.com company, announced that Samsung Heavy Industries (SHI) selected AWS as its preferred cloud provider to support its digital transformation.Samsung Heavy Industries is turning to AWS’s expansive infrastructure, unmatched performance, scalability, and industry-leading services to gain competitive advantage in the smart shipping industry.Samsung Heavy Industries leaves the heavy lifting of its infrastructure to AWS, the world’s leading cloud, so that its team can rapidly innovate on its autonomous shipping platform, a system that enables self-piloting of large container ships, LNG carriers, and floating production systems.Samsung Heavy Industries will continue to expand its smart shipping capabilities using the breadth and depth of AWS’s services…

South Korean shipbuilder Samsung Heavy Industries (SHI) has bagged a KRW 210 billion (USD 195 million) deal, for construction of an liquefied natural gas (LNG) carrier. A report in Business Korea said that SHI will ink the contract with a foreign shipping company by the end of the year, Samsung Heavy Industries officials said. The name of the company, however, remained undisclosed. SHI reportedly said it is a “foreign company”. The ship will have capacity of transporting 180,000 cubic meters of LNG and she will be probably delivered in 2020, according to local media. With the deal, orders secured by the shipbuilder this year will reach $6.9 billion for 28 ships, surpassing its annual target of $6.5 billion.

India's state-owned Cochin Shipyard Ltd (CSL) has started preliminary discussions to buy a controlling stake in debt-ridden ABG Shipyard Ltd, Livemint reported quoting un-named sources close to the development. Earlier, three suitors - Reliance Defence, Shapoorji Pallonji Group and the UK’s Liberty House - have shown interest in buying ABG, even as its lenders try to force the ship maker out of a debt recast mechanism and recover their dues. However, sources say that they have backed out one by one. Now that Shapoorji Pallonji and Co. Ltd has decided to back out of the discussion, CSL entered the fray. ABG Shipyard’s lenders have been in talks with several strategic investors for a while. A controlling stake in ABG may be valued at Rs400-500 crore, the second of the two people said.

Traditionally, Italy’s location and coastal development have continued to ensure the country a flow of income from its role as a strategic European hub in what has come to be known as the new “maritime century.” The country boasts of having the largest ferry fleet, the twelfth most extensive merchant shipping fleet in the world (fourth in Europe), and the third biggest European fishing fleet, with the national maritime cluster generating 3% of GDP. But its growing cruise industry is being looked upon as the game changer to the gradual slump being witnessed in the other sectors. Italy remains “one of the most important destinations, the market of origin for large cruise lines and a world leader in shipbuilding.

Hyundai Heavy Industries, the world's biggest shipbuilder, has submitted a final bid for local rival Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering. Top shareholders of Daewoo are selling a 50.4 percent stake in the world's No. 3 ship maker.

Samsung Heavy Industries' overcrowded shipyard boasts about 40 months' worth of orders, yet analysts say that the seemingly buoyant shipbuilding industry may soon be heading into a multiyear downturn, and that bold efforts to buy up other shipbuilders - currently led by Hyundai Heavy Industries and STX Shipbuilding - could backfire in a costly way, IHT reported. Analysts say that new ship orders are dwindling and shipbuilding shares have not yet hit bottom. The slowing global economy is hurting worldwide trade and rising steel prices are squeezing shipbuilders' profit margins. Meanwhile, STX Group, the South Korean company that is the parent of STX Shipbuilding, is finalizing its buyout of Aker Yards, the biggest European ship maker.

Defense companies, which have suffered mightily on the stock markets of late, took a sharp upturn, led by General Dynamics Corp., which posted strong earnings last Wednesday and was upgraded by brokerage SG Cowen Thursday. Shares of General Dynamics, builder of the Seawolf submarine and M-1 tank, as well as Gulfstream corporate jets, gained as much as 5-1/8 in morning trading on the New York Stock Exchange, before settling back to 55-3/4, up 3-3/4. Exchange. A spate of aerospace- and defense-related companies posted earnings that mostly beat Wall Street expectations Wednesday, including commercial aircraft and defense giant Boeing Co. and United Technologies Corp., which makes engines and helicopters, but also elevators and air conditioning systems.

The ship maker has freshly reached a 2 billion USD deal to build automobile-carrying freighters for the Hoegh Autolier Company of the Netherland, in addition to a contract with another Dutch company, Rensen, for four freighters worth 12m Euro. In an effort to meet high demands from overseas customers, the Nam Trieu company has been spending $168.75m in upgrading technology and expanding workplace to increase its building and repairing capacity to 100,000 tons. The company is expected to recruit an additional 3,000 workers this year to bring its total staff to 8,000.

Vinashin has joined forces with Korea’s Songsan Company to form a joint venture to produce steel structures for shipbuilding. The Songsan-Vinashin JV will invest $35m to build a factory in the northern Hai Duong Province. The steel mill is set to come on stream in the second quarter of 2008. The mill is designed to produce steel structures for shipbuilding yards including Vinashin, replacing imported products in the national industry. The ship maker wants 60 percent of its steel to be sourced locally by 2010 from the current 30-40 percent. Vinashin Group said it needs $2.5b to carry out projects under the strategy of $1b in ship exports to 2010.

The Greek ship maker’s revenues grew 41 percent from $50 million to $70.6 million in compared to the same period a year ago. While revenue increased, it failed to match the rise in charter hire expenses that jumped from around $2 million to $29 million in 2005 third quarter. The company also restated its earnings for the first and second fiscal quarters in 2006 to remedy the accounting treatment for certain sale and leaseback transactions. The restatement would deduct $55 million from a gain on a seller's credit of $96 million. This would reduce earnings per-share by 1 cent in the first quarter and 7 cents in the second quarter. Net income per share in all subsequent quarters until Dec. 31, 2010 would be reduced by about 7 cents, the company stated.