Vietnam Shipbuilding Industry Group (Vinashin) on July 21 launched the first car-carrying vessel named HL01 Victory Leader, which is capable of carrying 4,900 cars and built at Ha Long Shipbuilding Company, an affiliate of Vinashin. The event marked an important progress in Vietnam’s shipbuilding sector.
The Vinashin’s target to turn Vietnam into the fourth powerful country in shipbuilding industry in 2015 is progressively become a reality when the group has been implementing a great deal of projects as well as receiving many order forms.
The global financial and economic crisis has impacted on most of ship builders all over the world. Many shipbuilding companies over the world have met difficulties in seeking capital to maintain their production while must cancelling a great deal of projects. That Vietnam has maintained large order forms affirms the prestige and the ability of Vinashin to its partners.
Vinashin has still completed building enormous vessels on scheduled despite of the impact of the global financial and economic crisis, said Pham Thanh Binh, Chairman of Vinashin. Two years ago, when two first 53,000-ton ships built by Vinashin were handed over to the Graig Investment Group of the UK, many people said that “the passport” to lead Vietnam to the world’s shipbuilding market came into effect. To date, Vinashin has received around US$6 billion worth of order forms, including over US$4 billion from order forms for exports. Most of the order forms will last until 2010 and 2012. Two years ago, Vietnam paid to attention to only large-tonnage vessels to carry commodities in stead of specialised ships to carry cars or petroleum.
Vietnam’s shipbuilding sector has so far pumped out a great deal of vessels, meeting the international standards, of various kinds of between 1,000 tons and 150,000 tons; crude oil tankers with capacity of over 100,000 tons; large-sized container, car, chemicals, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) ships; and rescue vessels serving the national security and defence.
Rami Ungar, a representative from the Israeli RAY shipping company, the owner of the Victory Leader ship, answered the question “why his company chooses Vietnam to build the most complicated vessel in the world?” that most of ship builders in the Europe halted building such vessels. Only some countries in the Asia including South Korea and Japan have experience in the shipbuilding; however, their price for such a vessel is rather high. After considering we chose Vietnam, not China, to sign such big contracts.
Rami Ungar affirmed the quality of the vessel as the ship built by Vinashin met all of technical standards. The vessel is estimated at around US$60 million at the signing time of the contract, Rami Ungar said, adding that his company had to pay only between US$55 million and US$57 million for the vessel, and that the next order forms will cheaper as they will not pay fees for the initial design and study. As planned, the Victory Leader vessel will be perfected and handed over to the owner in December of 2009. The second vessel will be transferred in the middle of 2010. And the next ones will be built every four months.
Car-carrying ship is a modern, complicated and rather unheard-of with Vietnam’s shipbuilding industry, said Nguyen Duc Than, general director of the Ha Long Shipbuilding Company. Regarding the Victory Leader, the ship consists of 11 fixed boards and two others hoisted by the hydraulic lifts. This is the most modern product built by Vietnam’s shipbuilding sector. Besides rest and working rooms for shipmen, the vessel was also equipped with modern works including swimming pools and playgrounds as luxurious hotels.
In order to finish the target to become a powerful country in shipbuilding industry, Vinashin has established big shipbuilding centres in the three regions of the country. In the North, Vinashin built shipbuilding factories of Nam Trieu, Bach Dang, and the expected Hai Ha in Hai Phong City and Quang Ninh Province. In the South, the group built a shipbuilding shop in Hau Giang Province. With a great deal of big and sefl-contained contracts, Vinashin expects to reach a local rate of over 60 percent in 2010, Binh stressed.
Huong Ly
Vietnamese
