Oshima Shipbuilding of Japan wants to expand its plant site by 30% — from the current 800,000 square metres — through land acquisition so that it can increase its shipbuilding capacity.
The Minami-family controlled shipyard disclosed that it has already acquired a 150,000 square metres land adjacent to its current site in March and will be bidding on a piece of 120,000 square metres reclaim land that is located south of Oshima.
The reclamation project is currently being carried out by the government of the Nagasaki prefecture.
“The project of the reclamation land is due to complete in March 2021 and hopefully we get to win the tender,” Oshima said.
Oshima says it has not finalised any decision on how it will be using the additional space.
“We may extend our shipyard's existing dry dock or add a new dry dock,” Oshima said. “We may also follow the [South] Korean style of shipbuilding: constructing newbuildings on land. Or we may build a new production block factory to construct large hulls so that the dry dock period for the newbuildings can be shortened. This will depend on the market situation.”
One shipbuilding expert estimates that if Oshima adds a new dry dock, the yard will need to receive an additional 20 newbuilding orders per year on top of the current 40 vessels.
Oshima, which is a reputable bulker builder, says its orderbook is full until the end of 2020 with 140 newbuildings and is marketing berth slots for 2021.
The company aims to increase its production output by 50,000 gross tons (gt) — to 1.41 million gt — by the end of this year with the help of the new 1,200-ton Goliath crane that it installed.
Oshima has tried to diversify beyond bulker construction into containerships for the past two years to cushion the dry bulk market downturn. It has came up with boxship designs of 1,800 teu and 2,700 teu but failed to win new business.
“We did not secure any containership newbuildings because we do not have the berth slots to offer,” Oshima said. “We were busy contracting bulkers.”
