Phil’s Subic Shipyard enters world’s top 10 shipyards
According to Clarkson Research Studies in the U.K., the world’s leading shipping services provider, HHIC-Phil’s Subic Shipyard ranked 10th in the world for the first time in terms of Compensated Gross Tonnage (CGT) with 1,757,000. This landmark was hit in five years since it was launched in April 2009, the company said in its press release.
It has no doubt that HHIC has been a pioneer in domestic shipbuilding industry, building Korea’s first steel vessel, oil rig, Asia’s first membrane LNG carrier, air cushion vehicle, cable ship and icebreaker. Because of economic crisis in 2008, emergence of Chinese shipbuilders and competitive competition, however, it felt behind.
Thanks to the completion of HHIC-Phil’s Subic Shipyard, the Korean shipbuilder was finally able to overcome its limitation in building high value-added vessels. Empowered by the improvement of mid- and long-term competitiveness, HHIC has established its ground to develop into the world’s leading shipbuilder.
Last month, HHIC-Phil’s Subic Shipyard won the bid to build the Very Large Crude Carrier (VLCC) for the first time. In the past, HHIC didn’t even attempt to participate in this kind of bid due to its narrow shipyard in Yeongdo.
Entering this year, in particular, HHIC has been successful in several bids including 300,000DWT VLCCs and over 10,000TEU VCLSs. So far, the company has book advance orders (nearly US 3.2 billion dollars, 50 ships in total) for three (3) years. Now, HHIC is treated as one of the world’s leading global shipbuilders.
HHIC-Phil’s Subic Shipyard is a global shipyard (900,000 pyeong) situated in Subic Bay Freeport Zone (SBFZ). It features all kinds of state-of-the-art facilities including two huge docks, 4km-long quay, four ultra-large gantry cranes and 1km-long automated assembly lines. In particular, the world’s largest dock (Dock 6, 550m in length, 135m in width, 13.5m in depth) is capable of building six container carriers at the same time.
An official from HHIC said, “We believe that we would be able to move higher with the Subic Shipyard.” He added, “We are going to develop HHIC-Phil’s Subic Shipyard into a global hub for shipbuilding and make Yeongdo Shipyard concentrate on passenger & cargo carriers and special-purpose vessels to evolve into a global shipbuilder.”
