Keep pace with shrinkage and expansion of product mix

By Kuang Zhanting

Keep pace with shrinkage and expansion of product mix

By Kuang Zhanting

“The double surplus of capacity and inventory is serious in the shipbuilding industry, therefore, we must pay special attention to risk control and rhythm control, in line with order taking and risk points, try to achieve overall operation profit and efficiency balance,” said Zhou Xuhui, deputy general manager of Guangzhou Shipyard International Company Limited(GSI),during an exclusive interview with the reporter.

Zhou Xuhui said GSI would control risk and consolidate and widen market through appropriate shrinkage and expansion of the product mix.

The company does not forget to be aggressive in the new high-technology and high value-added product sector. Ice zone ship type is the top choice.

Polar region is a sector with very promising market outlook. Whether development of polar resources or polar route operation, they have extensive development room. Equally in the Eurasian route, Arctic route at least narrows down traditional Indian Ocean route by half, can save a lot of business cost, and substantially improve transport efficiency. Polar environment has even higher requirements for equipment technology and quality, and ice zone equipment is still a virgin land to be developed, involving less competition.There are very few ships operating without ice-breaker pilotage in polar environment all the year round, as they do not have ice-breaking capacity,most of carriers which reach the ice region level are affected by season and channel.

After successfully delivering Audax and Pugnax -- two Class ARC7 polar heavy deck carriers, Guangzhou Shipyard International started to build the global first polar condensate tanker at the end of last year.ARC7 ice region level, pod propulsion, twoway ice-breaking, able to operate in -50 C environment...... Various unique technical indexes show the company’s ambition in ice region ship type.

Zhou Xuhui said: “We expect to guide world ice-breaking carrier trend through further exploration of ice zone ship type.” “Ice-breaking carrier”, a clear-cut market segment direction taking over the fine tradition of dislocation competition in market segmentation, GSI has set clear position of its product market based on its technology advantages and performance.

Furthermore, based on world passenger vessel/ro-ro passenger vessel market trend, GSI takes passenger vessel/ro-ro passenger vessel as another major development direction, plans to build it into another star product.Zhou said with transformation of the Chinese economy and market development and change, people’s living standard has been improving,passenger vessel product will make major headway in China,considering world passenger vessel market change, they can certainly contribute to the passenger vessel/ro-ro passenger vessel market.

Like ice zone ship type, GSI also has corresponding technical reserve and performance basis in passenger vessel/ro-ro passenger vessel products,as China’s earliest shipyard entering the passenger vessel/ro-ro passenger vessel market, GSI built two world most advanced luxury ro-ro passenger vessels“VISBY” and “GOTLAND” for European shipowners, later built roro passenger vessels required by Bohai and Nanhai. In the two in-process 1600-passenger/2300m lane dual -fuel luxury ro-ro passenger vessels, the first ship “VISBORG” has been launched, delivery is slated for next year, and it is expected to become world most environment-friendly, fastest, most luxury ro-ro passenger-cargo ship and become a new “Pearl” in the Baltic Sea.