Awash with an enormous backlog of ship orders, Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI) has announced it will reopen its massive Gunsan shipyard on the west coast of South Korea from January next year.
Some 750 workers will be hired and the yard will focus on block building.
South Korean president Moon Jae-in welcomed the shipyard’s reopening yesterday, as he had promised to carry out policies to support its normalisation, when he was running for president in early 2017.
HHI began to build its Gusan yard in May 2008 at the peak of the last supercycle in shipping to go alongside other yards in the HHI empire including Hyundai Mipo and Hyundai Samho. By the time it was completed the following summer, however, the markets were in post-Lehman shock. The yard was eventually shuttered in 2017.
The Gunsan yard is enormous; spread over 1.8m sq m and features one of the world’s largest drydocks, some 700 m long with a 1,600 ton crane.
Excellent news for the Korean workers. Proud to have worked in Ulsan and Goeje. Met some great people, hard workers all of them