China overtakes Korea

Korea’s shipbuilding industry, ranked top in the world, was overtaken by China’s in terms of order volume last January for the first time ever. According to Thursday’s report from Clarkson, a market researcher for the ship construction industry, the Korean shipbuilding industry received orders totalling 600,000 CGT (compensated gross tonnage) last month, much lower than China’s orders of 1.4 million CGT. China’s order volume is almost half of the world total order volume of 2.8 million CGT.

The Korean shipbuilding industry, however, does not appear to be concerned. With orders for at least the next three years already in, the intake of new orders is carefully paced and the results of just one month are not enough to determine overall performance, an industry insider said. More than half of China’s new shipbuilding orders in January are for a typically low-priced vessel, bulk cargo ships, while Korea did not take an order for even one bulk carrier.

The Korea Shipbuilders’ Association said, “Korea maintains a clear comparative advantage in higher value-added ships such as LNG ships, large container ships, and very large crude carriers. We are not in competition for low priced ships.”