Vinashin on course for success

Eight years after its establishment, the Viet Nam Shipping Industry Corporation (Vinashin) has built up a good reputation in the shipping industry winning a great number of orders for specialised ships and vessels from giants in the field, a Vinashin official has said.

Early this year, Vinashin won its biggest contract ever from the UK-based Graig Group to build 15 bulk carriers of 53,000 DWT each. It also signed a contract to build 13 ships of between 6,500 and 22,500 DWT for the Viet Nam National Shipping Lines (Vinalines) and received several orders from US, German, Italian, Japanese, Polish, the Korean and Chinese customers.

The yard?s success is attributed to assistance from the Government, which approved Vinashin?s development strategy and had policies helping the corporation find outlets for its products. The Government had provided loans for Vinalines to order new ships from Vinashin instead of purchasing second hand vessels from other countries.

However, Vinashin?s efforts to raise its products? competitiveness in both quality and price are the major factor behind its good performance, the deputy director Nguyen Quoc Anh stressed. “We had earlier imported equipment and materials used in shipbuilding, thus driving the production costs up and causing delays in delivery. Over the past three years, the corporation has conducted various projects on manufacturing materials and equipment domestically, which helped raise the local content rate in its products to 30-40%,” Anh said. By 2010, Vinashin aims to increase the local content to 60%. Additionally, Vinashin plans to boost co-operation with foreign partners with a view to narrowing the technical gap between Viet Nam?s shipbuilding industry and other countries in the region and the world.

Anh added that Vinashin has been implementing a series of projects aimed at raising the industry?s capacity, including the upgrading of its subsidiaries, the Ha Long, Bach Dang, Ben Kien, Nam Trieu and Saigon shipyards, and the building of a new shipyard at the Dung Quat Industrial Zone in the central province of Quang Ngai, which will be capable of building ships of around 100,000 DWT.

Vinashin has managed to grow at an average annual rate of 30 to 35% and, in the first six months of this year, it reported an increase of 71.8% in output and 88.8% in revenues compared to the same period last year.