Despite of the good performance of the international shipbuilding market and China topping the table of new orders, Chinese shipbuilding industry faces much more severe challenges in 2011. Cao You-sheng, deputy director of CSSC Technology Research & Economy Development Institute, stated that world's ship market would go positive in general with expected new orders of 80m to 100m DWT. He also predicted that there would be remarkable structural changes in the demand of overall shipbuilding market and Chinese shipbuilding industry would have to keep positive responses for the changes.
The first change he suggested is the blowout in offshore plants orders. Till mid-February, the total value of offshore plants new orders surpassed $12bn which included 15 drillships and 11 drilling platforms, similar to last year's total.
The second change is a rise in high-tech ships new orders. For the first two months of the year Korean shipyards won 49 ships in total with 1.91m CGT and 4.15m DWT, occupying 48.8% and 47.3% of world's total respectively. While 16 Chinese shipyards won 58 ships in total of 1.3m CGT and 4m DWT, accounting for 33.1% and 45.6% of world's total separately. The Chinese figures have a 15.7% gap with Korea in terms of CGT while a 1.7% in DWT, which reveals the fact that most of those ships Korean yards won are high-tech ships.
Cao said it was the changes in segment supply and demand that result in the above phenomenon. Due to the high orderbook and expected high output for bulk carriers in 2011, the current overcapacity is expect to keep its sentiment. Related spectaculars become more cautious of investing in bulkers.
On the contrary, containership market has improved significantly from the beginning of this year, and the rising oil price drove the offshore plants market going stronger. The changes in ship demand brought about changes in shipowner constitution. Compared to bulk carrier market, the access to containership and offshore market would be much higher, with more risks and requiring more expertise. Therefore, the recent buyers were mostly world top 20 liners or independent shipowners.
The structural changes in ship demands would provide these capable shipyards with rare opportunities on one hand, and on the other hand it would bring great pressures to these shipyards relying heavily on traditional ship market. With advantages in high-tech vessels and offshore sector, Korea almost monopolized large and mega containership as well as top offshore plant new orders. In contrast, the lagging behind of Chinese shipyard in new orders, especially high-tech and offshore orders, exactly embodied its weakness in design and building of high-tech ships and offshore plants. Chinese yards should rebuild a designing ability and building capacity for high-tech ships and offshore plants to secure competitiveness in the world shipbuilding market.