Chinese shipbuilding industry

March 20 (Bloomberg) -- Chinese shipyards gained the
biggest share of dry-bulk commodity ship orders for the first
time in at least a decade, shipbroker Clarkson Plc said.
Orders with Chinese shipbuilders for vessels that carry
commodities such as coal and iron ore will outpace Japan in the
first quarter, said Clarkson, the world's biggest shipbroker.
The shipyards have attracted orders for 98 vessels with a
combined deadweight capacity of 8.7 million tons so far in 2007.
Orders will rise 48 percent this year, according to Clarkson.
``Looking back over the last 10 years this is the first
time China has been ahead,'' Christian Waldegrave, an analyst at
the London-based shipbroker, said in a telephone interview
yesterday. ``China has a lot of capacity as they're opening new
yards and expanding current ones, and they're hungry for
orders.''
Japanese shipyards may be fully booked, Waldegrave said.
``There is a often a delay in the reporting of contracts at
Japanese yards, so the size of their order book and recent
contracting activity may be higher,'' he added.
China is building more shipyards as it aims to overtake
South Korea to become the world's biggest producer for all ship
classes by 2015.
``Korean yards have been concentrating more on container
ships, oil tankers and LNG carriers because they have a higher
value, though they may consider capesizes at current prices,''
Waldegrave said.
Capesizes are the largest type of ship used to carry dry-
bulk, while LNG carriers transport liquefied natural gas.

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March 19 (Bloomberg) -- Baosteel Group Corp., China's
biggest steelmaker, will buy a 35 percent stake in the country's
largest shipyard, currently under construction.
China State Shipbuilding Corp. will hold the remaining 65
percent stake in the 10 billion yuan ($1.3 billion) Changxing
shipyard in Shanghai, Baosteel said in a statement on its Web
site today.
China is building more shipyards as it aims to overtake
South Korea as the world's biggest producer by 2015. Chinese
shipbuilders produced 14.52 million deadweight tons of vessels
last year, about a fifth of the world's total and 20 percent more
than in 2005, state-run Xinhua News Agency reported on Jan. 31.
The shipyard will be completed in May, with four dry docks
and capacity to assemble 4.5 million deadweight tons of vessels,
Shanghai-based Baosteel said. The yard has received orders of
more than 7 million deadweight tons of vessels, it said.
Orders for China's shipbuilders climbed to a record 9.4
million compensated gross tons of in the first nine months of
2006, more than the 8.6 million for Japan and about half the 17.3
million for South Korea, according to the Shipbuilders'
Association of Japan, which used figures from Lloyd's World
Shipbuilding Statistics.
Compensated gross tons are a measure of ship size, and the
time required and materials used for production.
China's shipbuilding industry produced 172 billion yuan ($22
billion) of ships last year and made 9.6 billion yuan in profit,
Xinhua reported on Jan. 31. Exports by the Chinese yards jumped
74 percent to $8.1 billion, the agency said.

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Chinese shipbuilding industry is taking the lead in receiving orders in the
global market for three consecutive months, boosted by a brisk bulk ship
market, Clarkson, a London-based researcher specialized in the shipbuilding and
shipping market analysis, said on Tuesday.
According to Clarkson on April 17, Chinese shipbuilders posted 6 million CGT
(Compensated Gross Tonnage) in orders as of the end of March, which was 1.5-
fold of that scored by Korean shipbuilders (4.4 million CGT).
However, the gap between the Chinese and the Korean shipbuilders in received
orders was revealed to have been narrowed last month, from 1.4 million CGT in
January and 1.8 million CGT in February to 1.6 million CGT in March.
Such strides of Chinese shipbuilders in the global market was largely due to
the increasing volume of goods transported across countries, hence raising bulk
shipbuilding orders worldwide, which totaled 215 units as of the end of last
month, a 65 percent year-on-year increase.
The situation turned out to be favorable particularly for Chinese
shipbuilders, who mainly focus on bulk shipbuilding, as much as over 40 percent
of the total orders they normally receive.
On the other hand, Korea's major shipbuilders are not keen on bulk
shipbuilding yet, except that Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering has
accepted orders of four capesize bulk carriers recently.
Currently, Korean shipbuilders have secured orders for the next three years,
amid a brisk growth of the world shipbuilding market.

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April 17 (Bloomberg) -- Frontline Ltd., the world's biggest
oil-tanker company by capacity, ordered two crude oil-carrying
vessels from Chinese shipbuilder Jiangsu Rongsheng Heavy
Industries Group Co. Ltd.
Each will be able to haul 1 million-barrel cargoes of oil.
They are due for delivery in 2010, Hamilton, Bermuda-based
Frontline said in a statement to the Oslo Stock Exchange today,
without disclosing their price.
The cost such carriers, known as suezmaxes because they are
the largest capable of passing through Egypt's Suez canal, is
about $80 million each, according to Oslo-based shipbrokers
Fearnleys AS.
The company made an average of $31,200 a day from hiring
out each of its suezmaxes in the fourth quarter of last year,
Frontline said on Feb. 27. It has eight ships on order,
including the pair announced today.

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May 2, 2007 (China Knowledge) - Shanghai Waigaoqiao Shipbuilding Co yesterday
delivered the hull of the nation's biggest floating production, storage and
offloading (FPSO) vessel to ConocoPhillips China.

The 300,000-deadweight-ton vessel, 323 m long and 63 m wide with a hull depth of
32.5m, is valued at US$230 million, and is the largest of its type. The ship is
also the most expensive ship China has ever built and among the largest of its
type in the world.

Besides being able to load and process raw crude, and to store and offload
stabilized crude, an FPSO vessel can also serve as the production unit for an
offshore crude or natural gas exploration project.

The new FPSO vessel, which can store as much as two million barrels of crude
oil, will be used at China's largest offshore oil field, Peng Lai 19-3, located
in Bohai Bay in the country's northeast. ConocoPhillips is cooperating with the
China National Offshore Oil Corp. in the Peng Lai project.

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Tasman said:

I've found this a fascinating and informative thread tphuang.

There is no doubt that China is pushing ahead rapidly in its attempt to become the world's leading shipbuilder by 2015. It seems that Japan will be left behind, leaving it to a competition between China and South Korea. If China continues to move ahead at the present rate of expansion I can't see South Korea staying ahead of it.

Cheers

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China begins expanding its supertanker fleet
By David Lague
Published: May 16, 2007

SHANGHAI: China has begun an ambitious effort to build a fleet of more than 90 supertankers to improve its control over oil imports which are vital to sustaining a booming economy, shipping industry experts say.

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