China is said to be aggressively encouraging restructuring of domestic enterprises through, for instance, upgrading overall industries, M&A and so on, as the government announced a new standard plan for shipbuilding and related industries.

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) of China announced on November 13 that the governmental department would release ‘Model for Ship (Shipbuilding) Industry’ to strengthen management system of shipbuilding and related companies, get rid of contradiction of overcapacity and push ahead with restructuring. Also, it seeks to promote technology levels and realize upgrades of enterprises that the companies could develop stably and firmly through the new standard.

According to the release, the Chinese government suggests accurate requirements in various areas, including inspection of production facility, construction capability, technical innovation, quality verification system, energy saving, environment protection and so on.

The conditions include such contents as that companies must be equipped with management of information and information gathering capability, which are equivalent to technologies in manufacturing process. Also, the penetration rate of design tool for data processing should be enhanced to reach more than 85% with ship construction data management and analysis system to be established as well as achieving over 80% penetration rate of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system.

In addition, the government set up major manufacturing technology indexes: integrative energy consumption of vessel construction is set at 0.20 tons of standard coal while integrated steel material utilization rate must reach over 90% and the rates of welding automation and semi-automation to be more than 65%.