As going through extensive restructuring, Chinese shipbuilding industry is anticipated to reduce their oversupplied shipbuilding facilities around by 30% until 2015.  

Director Bao Zhangjing of China Shipbuilding Industry Research Center said at World Shipping (China) Summit 2013 held in Ningbo that the Chinese government is putting its efforts to upgrade and transform domestic shipbuilding industry through reducing shipbuilding capacity amid depression of shipping market.

Bao said that Chinese yards’ current shipbuilding capacity is 80.10m dwt however their utilization rate was only 50-55% for the first nine months of this year, dropping from 75% level of 2012 by around 20-25%p. Industry players expect that more than half of some 1,600 Chinese yards would shut down their businesses over the next one to two years.

Particularly, he added that the government had introduced policy measures including banning construction of new yards and drydocks, encouraging mergers, shifting capacity to other industries, closing yards with no new orders and so on in order to promote overall industrial competitiveness not to simply reducing China’s shipbuilding capacity.  

Bao said that shipbuilding capacity reduction must be conducted with a long-term perspective. During this procedure, smaller and speculative yards would be sacrificed however a few surviving bigger yards will be able to bring about a positive outcome raising Chinese shipbuilding industry’s global prestige and competitiveness in quality, management and service sectors, he predicted.