Shanghai Facility News

High and increasing demand from international shipowners and local shipyards has led lifeboat and davit manufacturer Schat-Harding to invest in a state-of-the-art lifeboat servicing facility in Shanghai, China. Umoe Schat-Harding LSA Service (Shanghai) Co Ltd began work as a company in its own right in December 2009. Located in Pudong Shanghai, with service offices in Guangzhou and Qingdao, it is a development of Schat-Harding's fast growing Chinese servicing network. "We started a service station in China in 2006 in Qingdao, moved to Shanghai in 2007, opened a second office in Guangzhou in 2008 and now we have this superb new facility here," said Andrew Lemmis, managing director.

Rapidly rising prices for steel plate in China may be taking the edge off the financial performance at some Chinese shipbuilders. But it will take a lot more than that to undermine shipyards' dramatic expansion plans aimed at ensuring the country's builders produce more ships than any other nation by 2015. In the short run, however, the country's relatively inexperienced builders seem to have failed to read the steel supply signs. They have found themselves caught out by a number of factors driving up ship steel prices. These have risen by almost 60% over the last 30 months or so and now stand close to $400 a ton. On the one hand, soaring…