Innovation to boost shipbuilder's fleet

Rao Yizhong, a senior welder with CSSC Guangzhou Longxue Shipbuilding, has been upgrading his knowledge and skills with his fellow welders to build new vessel types and offshore facilities.

"Welding a vessel for liquefied natural gas is technically demanding because special steel is used, and different skills, equipment and materials are required," said Rao, who has 29 years of welding experience.

Offshore engineering facilities, such as oil rigs, require different underwater strength, Rao said.

The company is banking on such technical innovation to strengthen its competitiveness and help it through market doldrums.

As early as 2005, the company started its research and development on very large crude carriers and ore carriers.

"Because of a lack of proprietary brand names, a significant portion of the manufacturing of our country is reduced to low-end processing. From the very beginning, we were determined to take the path of innovation," Yu Baoshan, chairman of the company, said.

The 308,000-deadweight-ton crude carriers, the 230,000 DWT ore carriers and the 82,000 DWT bulk carrier are in the leading ranks judged by international standards and have found a niche in the market for their efficiency.

The company has delivered 20 vessels with a combined 4.17 million DWTs and is building 17 more vessels.

It aims to have annual capacity of 3.5 million DWTs and up to five world-renowned classic models by the end of 2015.

The market for the carriers has been highly competitive, and as CSSC Guangzhou Longxue Shipbuilding expands its market, it should go further into developing offshore engineering products, said Huang Lijun, secretary-general of the Guangdong Association of Shipbuilding Industry.

As a joint venture among China State Shipbuilding Corp, Baosteel Group Corp and China Shipping (Group) Co, it benefits from the close cooperation in shipbuilding, steel supply and ocean shipping to beat the volatile market.

The company has its shipbuilding base on Longxue Island in Nansha district, Guangzhou.

With other shipbuilders in the Pearl River Delta, it forms one of the three major shipbuilding bases in China, with the other two around Bohai Bay and the Yangtze estuary.

The Longxue base helps fulfill the national plan of becoming a world shipbuilding power with annual production of 22 million DWTs by 2015, up from 17 million DWTs in 2010.

The finished vessels, new orders and orders at hand for Chinese shipbuilders accounted for 45.1 percent, 52.2 percent and 43.3 percent of world totals last year.

Due to the weak global economic recovery, new orders received by Chinese shipbuilders fell 51.9 percent to 36.2 million DWTs last year, according to the China Association of the National Shipbuilding Industry. About one-third of the shipbuilders surveyed failed to receive any new orders.

The global shipbuilding industry is facing a gloomier situation this year, with a continued fall in the prices of new vessels.

The prices for large container vessels and liquefied natural gas vessels, however, are expected to be stable.