A recent news article published in the China Daily speaks about Country’s shipbuilders chart new waters.
Decades of efforts
Hudong-Zhonghua’s delivery schedule is full until 2027. However, Song Wei, its chief engineer, said this is not down to luck, but to persistent hard work and a strong determination to overcome difficulties.
Due to this special form of natural gas, shipping it in a liquefied state at a temperature below — 163 C is the most cost-efficient method.
It costs more than 1 billion yuan ($139.8 million) to build a single LNG carrier, equivalent to the cost of constructing two Boeing 737 aircraft.
A 174,000-cubic-meter LNG vessel typically carries about 100,000 metric tons of LNG safely across thousands of kilometers of ocean. Building such specialized cargo carriers requires state-of-the-art manufacturing techniques, as the vessels are made from more than 1.1 million components.
Responding to the central government’s call to build domestically-made vessels, Hudong-Zhonghua launched the LNG project in 1998. It decided to introduce patented technology for a liquefied cargo containment system from GTT of France.
LNG project in Guangdong province
In March 2002, the shipyard won the bid for the LNG project in Guangdong province to construct two 147,000-cu-m carriers, with the option of building an additional vessel.
Construction of China’s first home-built LNG carrier started at Hudong-Zhonghua in December 2004, and the vessel was delivered in April 2008.
“By the time our first ship (a first-generation vessel) was delivered in 2008, a second-generation LNG carrier had been built by a South Korean shipyard,” Song said. As high-value-added vessels, LNG carriers have been upgraded from generation to generation due to constant market demand for higher efficiency.
Following a requirement to load more LNG with less consumption of energy, in 2007, a team of about 30 led by Song started work on independently researching and developing the second-generation Changjian series. Hudong-Zhonghua received its first order for this model in 2010, and it went into operation in January 2015.
“This was a key turning point and proof that Hudong-Zhonghua was capable of developing and building large LNG ships on its own,” Song said. “However, at the time, global LNG carriers were entering the third-generation phase.”
International peers
The shipyard kept narrowing the gap with its international peers by introducing the third-generation Chang’an series and fourth-generation Changxing series, receiving the first orders in 2012 and 2017, respectively.
“Facing fierce competition from top shipbuilders in South Korea, our annual new orders have maintained at between 6 percent and 8 percent of the global total for the past few years. We have continued to sharpen our development capability to win increased international recognition,” Song said.
In December 2021, Hudong-Zhonghua unveiled a fifth-generation 174,000-cu-m LNG vessel in its Changheng series, and received 34 orders for these ships last year. Its global market share rose from less than 7 percent in 2021 to 21.8 percent last year.
Compared with the previous generation, the Changheng series reduces more than 10 tons of carbon emissions on a daily basis. In addition, the shipbuilder said the new model can carry 800 cu m more LNG than the previous generation.
Did you subscribe to our newsletter?
It’s free! Click here to subscribe!
Source: China Daily
