Russia’s Far East shipbuilding cluster to receive US$22.2 billion orders by 2025

This is part of Presidential Decree On the development of shipbuilding in Russian Far East, which is expected to be adopted soon and will involve the establishment of a Far Eastern shipbuilding cluster.

It is planned that the majority of orders will go to Zvezda shipyard, expected to be built in Primorye and which will be the largest in the country. Some of the orders will be placed with Khabarovsk and Amur Shipyards. The total order value is estimated at 780 billion rubles (US$22,2 billion). The majority of future ships will be built for the development of the Russian Arctic sea shelf, to the order of domestic oil and gas corporations Rosneft and Gazprom, and their foreign partners including ExxonMobil and Eni.

Implementation of the projects is an acute need as The current level of utilisation of Khabarovsk and Amur Shipyards, which account for 10% to 25% of Russia’s total capacity, is very small. So implementation of such a project is an urgent requirement to save these yards from bankruptcy.

The plans involve the establishment of a Russian-Korean engineering centre for shipbuilding and marine engineering, which will be partially controlled by the Russian government and the Korean Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering company, and will concentrate on offshore projects.

Project implementation will be controlled by United Shipbuilding Corporation, which has yet another new president from the beginning of May. According to Denis Manturov, Russia’s Minister of Industry and Trade, current head Vladimir Schmakov, is to be replaced by Alexey Rachmanov, the current deputy minister of Industry and Trade.