Shanghai: China State Shipbuilding Corportation (CSSC), one of the two main state-run shipbuilding conglomerates in China, expects to see the shipbuilding market continue to suffer this year and next year.
Hu Wenming, president of CSSC, said in recent interview with Chinese local business magazine, Talents, that the shipbuilding market is expected to bottom out in 2015 and start to recover in 2016.
Hu said newbuilding prices started to increase in the second half of 2013 but shipyards won’t benefit from these orders until 2016, adding that 2015 will be a year to digest the low margin orders of 2012.
According to Hu, only 87 out of 700 shipyards in China have received new orders this year. “It’s the shipowners’ choices, we are not deliberately competing with smaller shipyards, actually our prices are about 5% higher than theirs,” Hu said.
“This year and next year are good times for mergers of shipbuilding assets,” he said.
CSSC’s Shanghai Waigaoqiao Shipbuilding has recently been linked with helping out ailing private yard, Rongsheng. [03/09/14]
