Opportunity knocks

The number of active shipyards around the world shrunk from 1,031 in 2008 to 371 in 2023. Chinese shipbuilders took advantage of the trend to restructure and reshuffle, and increase their global market share.

"While conventional shipbuilding countries including South Korea and Japan were confronted with tremendous challenges amid the global downturn, Chinese shipbuilders rapidly adapted to the new situation based on their strong risk control capability — as well as strengths in production ability — and expanded their global market share," said Wang Zhangjian, director of the Design and Research Institute with CSSC's Shanghai Waigaoqiao Shipbuilding Co.

In 2010, China's shipbuilding industry accounted for 41.9 percent of deliveries, 48.5 percent of contracts and 40.8 percent of the global order book. Since then, China has strengthened its domination of the global market.

In the meantime, more and more Chinese shipbuilders have made breakthroughs in building large-scale and high-end vessels.

One of its most notable achievements is the independently developed, designed, and constructed very large ethane carrier. According to Hu from Jiangnan Shipyard, the vessel was independently developed by his shipyard, with all the core systems having independent intellectual property rights.

"Its complexity is not inferior to that of building LNG carriers," said Hu.

Starting research and development in 2016, Jiangnan Shipyard received its first VLEC order at the end of 2018, and delivered its inaugural vessel in late 2020. To date, the Shanghai-based shipyard has delivered nine VLECs, with another 40 more ships in hand, accounting more than 70 percent of all hand-held VLEC orders worldwide.

"Such unparalleled dominance in the global VLEC market is attributed to the more than two decades of gas carrier research, development, and construction," said Hu.