Modern worldwide shipbuilding industry

Posted:5/27/2011 11:13:50 AM

In the 20th century, shipbuilding (which encompasses the shipyards, the marine equipment manufacturers, and many related service and knowledge providers) grew as an important and strategic industry in a number of countries around the world. This importance stems from:
The large number of skilled workers required directly by the shipyard, along with supporting industries such as steel mills and engine manufacturers;
A nation's need to manufacture and repair its own navy and vessels that support its primary industries
Historically, the industry has suffered from the absence of global rules and a tendency towards (state-supported) over-investment due to the fact that shipyards offer a wide range of technologies, employ a significant number of workers, and generate foreign currency income (as the shipbuilding market is both global and dollar-based).
Shipbuilding is therefore an attractive industry for developing nations. Japan used shipbuilding in the 1950s and 1960s to rebuild its industrial structure; South Korea started to make shipbuilding a strategic industry in the 1970s, and China is now in the process of repeating these models with large state-supported investments in this industry.
As a result, the world shipbuilding market suffers from over-capacities, depressed prices (although the industry experienced a price increase in the period 2003–2005 due to strong demand for new ships which was in excess of actual cost increases), low profit margins, trade distortions and widespread subsidisation. All efforts to address the problems in the OECD have so far failed, with the 1994 international shipbuilding agreement never entering into force and the 2003–2005 round of negotiations being paused in September 2005 after no agreement was possible. After numerous efforts to restart the negotiations these were formally terminated in December 2010. The OECD's Council Working Party on Shipbuilding will continue its efforts to identify and progressively reduce factors that distort the shipbuilding market.
Where state subsidies have been removed and domestic industrial policies do not provide support, in high-cost nations shipbuilding has usually gone into steady, if not rapid, decline. The British shipbuilding industry is one of many examples of this. From a position in the early 1970s where British yards could still build the largest types of sophisticated merchant ships, British shipbuilders today have been reduced to a handful specialising in defence contracts and repair work. In the U.S.A., the Jones Act (which places restrictions on the ships that can be used for moving domestic cargoes) has meant that merchant shipbuilding has continued, but such protection has failed to penalise shipbuilding inefficiencies. The consequence of this is contract prices that are far higher than those of any other nation building oceangoing ships.
World shipbuilding industry in the 21st century
China is the largest shipbuilder in the world in terms of compensated gross tons of ships as of 2010, at a total of 15.9 million tons, followed by South Korea with 11.77 million compensated gross tons. In terms of monetary value of the ships, South Korea is still the largest shipbuilder in the world as of 2010, followed by China, at a total value of $30.61 billion.
Japan lost its leading position in the industry to South Korea in 2004, and its market share has since fallen sharply. The entire European market share has fallen to only a tenth of South Korea's, and the outputs of the United States and the rest of the world have become negligible.
Modern shipbuilding manufacturing techniques
Modern shipbuilding makes considerable use of prefabricated sections. Entire multi-deck segments of the hull or superstructure will be built elsewhere in the yard, transported to the building dock or slipway, then lifted into place. This is known as "block construction". The most modern shipyards pre-install equipment, pipes, electrical cables, and any other components within the blocks, to minimize the effort needed to assemble or install components deep within the hull once it is welded together. This was first introduced by Alstom Chantiers de l'Atlantique when they built the largest Ocean Liner in the world Cunard's RMS Queen Mary 2.
Ship design work, also called naval architecture, may be conducted using a ship model basin. Modern ships, since roughly 1940, have been produced almost exclusively of welded steel. Early welded steel ships used steels with inadequate fracture toughness, which resulted in some ships suffering catastrophic brittle fracture structural cracks (see problems of the Liberty ship). Since roughly 1950, specialized steels such as ABS Steels with good properties for ship construction have been used. Although it is commonly accepted that modern steel has eliminated brittle fracture in ships, some controversy still exists. Brittle fracture of modern vessels continues to occur from time to time as the use of grade A and grade B steel of unknown toughness or fracture appearance transition temperature (FATT) in way of ships' side shells can be less than adequate for all ambient conditions.
Ship repair industry
All ships need maintenance and repairs. A part of these jobs must be carried out under the supervision of the Classification Society. A lot of maintenance it is carried out while at sea or in port by ship's staff. However a large number of repair and maintenance works can only be carried out while the ship is out of commercial operation, in a Ship repair Yard. Prior to undergoing repairs, tankers must dock at a Deballasting Station for if necessary completing the tank cleaning operations and pumping ashore its slops (dirty cleaning water and hydrocarbon residues).