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Joon San

Wong Joon San

The mainland's average annual demand for new vessels for transport, including China Ocean Shipping's orders, is about 1.8 million deadweight tonnes (dwt), an academic says.

 Guo Yanliang, a professor at the Marine Design & Research Institute of China (Maric), said as transport was one of the key economic development areas in the mainland, most demand would come from Chinese owners between now and early next century.

 He predicted the world's ship market would be moderately good in the next few years, with most new vessels being no less than 35 million dwt.

 Mr Guo was speaking at the second conference for New Ship & Marine Technology into the 21st Century, organised by seven associations, including the Hong Kong Institute of Marine Technology.

 He said that based on market prospects and the state of the mainland's shipbuilding industries, the China State Shipbuilding Corp in its ninth five-year plan intended to increase all-round competition capabilities to make the shipbuilding industry a new economy growth sector and a mainstay of exports.

 Its main aim was to increase shipbuilding capacity to four million dwt, the production of newbuildings to three million dwt and the world market share from 5 per cent to 10 per cent.

 The mainland would be among the world's advanced shipbuilders early next century, but would also face serious challenges, Mr Guo said.

 'The first is the over-capacity of world shipbuilding, and there will be a long and strong competition in this market,' he said.

 The second was that the mainland's shipbuilding industries still lagged behind advanced shipbuilders in other countries in terms of size, capital capacity, technology and management.

 Mr Guo said it was important for the mainland's shipbuilding industries to grab opportunities and to take immediate countermeasures to face the challenges.

 'Among them, ship-type development is clearly one of the important countermeasures to meet the market demand and to be more competent,' he said.

 The mainland's shipyards had built more than 200 types and designs of new vessels in the eighth five-year plan.

 Mr Guo said great efforts had been made by different shipyards to optimise existing ship types in designing and building ships of internationally advanced standard.

 He said examples of this were a 44,000 dwt product tanker built by Dalian shipyard, a 98,000 dwt product tanker built by Dalian New Shipyard, a 70,000 dwt Panamax bulk carrier and a new 73,000 dwt Panamax bulk carrier constructed by Jiangnan shipyard.

 The tankers of 35,000 dwt and 32,400-34,600 dwt designed by Maric were the most popular designs for replacements in the mainland's tanker fleet.

 Mr Guo said liquefied petroleum gas carriers, large oil tankers and chemical product tankers, and fast passenger craft were also built by mainland shipyards.

 Mr Guo said the shipbuilding industry was one of the first to use computers.

 The mainland had ordered several world-famous software packages such as Nastran from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sesam from Det Noska Veritas of Norway, and Safehull from the American Bureau of Shipping.



Professor predicts great advances but warns of competition