IHI Marine United (IHIMU) of Japan contracted two VLCCs with Japanese owner JX Group.
IHIMU took around five years to book another order for VLCC since its last contract in 2007. Recently, new order activity for VLCC in the world has almost stopped, except that KOTC awarded Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering of South Korea an order for four newbuilding VLCCs.
Meanwhile, IHIMU contracted a total of nine newbuildings - three tankers, 93,000-dwt coal ships, 56,000-dwt bulker pair, etc., during the fiscal year 2011 (April 2011-March 2012).
Overall newbuilding contract for FY 2011 values around JPY 45.5bn ($570.6m), down by 62% on previous year.
Besides, repair business saw JPY 9.6bn contracted, while offshore facilities and others inked JPY 8.8bn, all of them stood lower than FY 2010's record.
IHIMU recorded FY 2011 revenue of JPY 163bn, down by 7% (newbuilding JPY 132bn, repair JPY 14bn, offshore and others JPY 17bn).
As of the end of March, IHIMU had JPY 186.6bn of orders on the book (newbuilding JPY 175.8bn, repair JPY 1.6bn, offshore and others JPY 9.2bn)