Korea’s shipbuilding industry, surpassing China, ranked first for 3 consecutive years

Input 2021.01.05 16:29 | Revision 2021.01.05 17:10

It was surveyed that the Korean shipbuilding industry ranked first in the global order performance in 2020. After beating China in 7 years in 2018, it maintained the No. 1 position for 3 consecutive years. The driving force was that the Korean shipbuilding industry preoccupied the high-value-added ship market such as liquefied natural gas (LNG) ships with technological prowess.

▲ Commissioning of a 14,500 TEU-class super-large container ship built by Hyundai Heavy Industries. / Provided by Korea Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering
According to the shipbuilding industry on the 5th, Clarkson Research, a shipbuilding and shipping market analysis agency in the UK, compiled the results of ship orders by country in 2020. ) And ranked first in the world. This was followed by △ 7.37 million CGT in China, 1.37 million CGT in Japan and 950,000 CGT in Russia.

Even in terms of the amount of ship orders, Korea ranked first. The Korean shipbuilding industry was found to have won a total of 18.3 billion dollars (about 20 trillion won) last year. △ China 14.5 billion dollars △ Russia 4.6 billion dollars △ Japan 2.6 billion dollars. The gap in order amount with China widened from 1.1 billion dollars in 2019 to 3.8 billion dollars.

The Korean shipbuilding industry suffered sluggishness in the first half of last year in the aftermath of the coronavirus infection (Corona 19). The order volume also reached 1.35 million CGT, a third of China’s 4.84 million CGT. However, in the second half of the year, they showed support. In the second half of last year, Korea won 6.84 million CGT and China 3.85 million CGT.

Especially in the high value-added ship type, the so-called’Shipbuilding Big 3′, Samsung Heavy Industries (010140), Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering (042660)This overwhelmed China. At the end of the year, the Korean shipbuilding industry swept out 21 large LNG carriers of 174,000㎥ or higher and 6 ultra-large crude oil carriers (VLCC) ordered from around the world. Ten (62.5%) of the 16 large container ships of 12,000 TEU (1 TEU is one 6m container) or higher have also won contracts by the Korean shipbuilding industry.

The Export-Import Bank of Korea’s Overseas Economic Research Institute said in the ‘2021 Shipping and Shipbuilding Industry Prospect Report’, “As global new shipbuilding orders are demand to cope with environmental regulations, especially greenhouse gas emission regulations, the importance of efficiency and performance is increasing.” The orders of the company will also improve.”

Korea Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering and Samsung Heavy Industries also posted new year’s beast performance. Korea Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering has signed a contract with an Asian shipping company to build a ship worth about 900 billion won for 6 ultra-large container ships with 15,000 TEU-class LNG. Samsung Heavy Industries also received an order from Pan Ocean for a 174,000㎥-class LNG carrier worth 193 billion won.