Despite current global economic slowdown, Hanjin Heavy Industries & Construction (HHIC)-Phil’s Subic Shipyard won a bid to build mid-size container ships for the first time this year.
The shipbuilder recently announced that it has signed a USD 450 million contract to build ten 5,000TEU container ships (options included) with ship owners in Europe.
Due to unfavorable shipping and shipbuilding market conditions caused by global economic recession, HHIC hasn’t been able to win a decent bid since early last year. Based on recently dramatic improvement in cost competitiveness, however, HHIC-Phil’s Subic Shipyard has finally been able to win this bid. Because the company is also under negotiation with other ship owners, another good news may come soon.
These days, large vessels have been the mainstream in container ship market. In fact, there has been almost no demand for mid-size container ships (5,000TEU). Because of high expectation on recovery of global economy and excessive bidding for very large container ships, mid-size container ships have become more popular.
The industry report says that HHIC-Phil’s Subic Shipyard’s hard efforts to build cost competitiveness with state-of-the-art facilities and abundant labor finally pay off.
With the success by Subic Shipyard, it appears that Yeongdo Shipyard would also be able to achieve some notable accomplishments once the ongoing manufacturing system innovation project is completed.
An official from HHIC said, “Due to economic slowdown around the world, it has been difficult for us to win a new bid. However, we have been eventually able to win it thanks to superior cost competitiveness, high quality and great reliability.” He added, “Empowered by this success, we are going to keep promoting our sales activities.”
The container ship HHIC-Phil’s Subic Shipyard has signed is 255m in length, 37m in width and 22m in depth and can make up to 21.5 knots. It is the state-of-the-art, environment-friendly ship which has adopted eco design technology.
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Source: HHIC, June 15, 2012