In choppy seas, some are shipshape

Chinese high-tech vessels will sail in European waters

In November, the Chinese company Wuchang Shipbuilding Industry delivered an offshore engineering vessel it built for the Greek shipping outfit Toisa Company.

The Chinese company, also known as Wu Chuan, whose headquarters are in Wuhan, Hubei province, had earlier delivered 11 marine vessels of four different types to Toisa. The latest vessel, Explorer, 83 meters long, with a beam of 22 meters, and with 18,000 kilowatts of power, can perform oil exploration and other smaller offshore operations. The makers say the vessel can be operated from a computer and can operate in strong gale-force winds.

Wang WangSheng, vice-general manager of Wu Chuan, says the vessel is highly automated and can be operated by just one person. In the past, a similar vessel would have needed 20 people, he says.

Having been delivered, Explorer is bound for Western Europe, where it will perform services including towing oil platforms, coastal surveillance, delivering goods and recovering oil.

Since a boom-and-bust period between 2003 and 2007, the global shipbuilding industry has been going through huge restructuring. Clarkson Research Services of Britain, a specialist in maritime research, says that over the past five years, 138 big shipbuilding companies, accounting for more than 20 percent of the industry, have gone under.

Arne Rikardsen, a surveyor and site manager with the Norwegian risk management company Det Norske Veritas, says Wu Chuan's vessels match comparable vessels built in Japan, and are built more inexpensively, giving the company, a big advantage internationally.

In the 1990s Wu Chuan began to diversify, including in the private vessels market, for which it built vessels designed for offshore engineering, such as platform drilling services. It was an opening that allowed it to amass a great deal of experience.

In 2003, Toisa's offshore manufacturing division took Wu Chuan's first overseas order, and Wu Chuan has gone on to become the largest manufacturer in China of vessels for offshore use, signing contracts worth more than 7 billion yuan ($11.5 billion; 8.4 billion euros). It has outstanding contracts worth 2 billion yuan, with maritime vessels taking up more than 40 percent of the company's business, Wang says.

Unfamiliarity with international laws and regulations and complex overseas trade relations are some of the difficulties domestic shipyards face.

Ray Crosby, a project manager with Toisa, says his company is happy with the relationship it has had with Wu Chuan for more than 10 years.

"We plan for more projects to be negotiated in the future."

Vessels delivered earlier are working in oilfields in the North Sea and Brazil, he says.

Even though the international shipping and shipbuilding industries are still in a downturn, China, Greece and other European countries working together in shipbuilding continue to remain optimistic.

Former Greek shipping minister Kostis Mousouroulis, on a trip to China this year, said the economic crisis that had troubled Greek ship owners was slowly ebbing and that the shipping companies were optimistic about China being the center of international trade, and the prospects this offered.

Greek ship owners have long been the largest investors in shipbuilding, and China is their main partner. Since 2000, Chinese shipbuilding companies have built more than 900 vessels for Greek owners in enterprises worth nearly $50 billion. Every year nearly 60 percent of China's imported oil and half of its general imports are carried by Greek shipping companies.

In 2010, China offered Greece a $5 billion ship fund to encourage the country to order Chinese-built vessels. Cooperation has spread in both shipbuilding and the shipping industry. Not only are traditional bulk carriers, oil tankers and container ships being made, but companies are also involved in offshore engineering projects.

The Chinese Shipbuilding Industry Association says that from January to September, 80 companies in the Chinese shipbuilding industry had total income of 182.3 billion yuan, 15.8 percent less than in the corresponding period last year, and gross profit of 4.9 billion yuan, nearly 54 percent less than in the previous corresponding period.

liukun@chinadaily.com.cn