Chinese build Ketchikan floating drydock

A new 2,500-tonne floating dry dock will be built by the Chinese shipbuilder Penglai Bohai Ship Co for the Ketchikan Shipyard, in Alaska, at a cost of $9.2 million for delivery in July 2007.

“This will provide us with the additional shiplift capacity on the dry docks themselves and, more importantly, it will allow us to transfer ships onto land and ultimately into the covered (ship-haul) facilities,” said Randy Johnson, president of Alaska Ship & Drydock, which has operated the Ketchikan Shipyard since 1994.

Located on Bohai Bay in northeast China, Penglai Bohai, the yard?s general manager, Yang Honghao said the dry dock project has a special meaning to the company because it won a U.S. government project through a bidding process. “Commercially, it’s not a very profitable project,” Honghao said. “But practically, it’s a very, very important project to the shipyard because it’s the first time that the shipyard takes a contract from the U.S. government and also the first time that the shipyard does the project with a U.S. client.”

The deal ends a year-long effort to obtain a dry dock for the Ketchikan Shipyard.

Three rounds of bidding attracted only one North American bidder, from Vancouver, and Penglai was the only bidder that submitted a bid low enough to keep within the project budget.