Intelligence into the future market competition the main elements of new ship orders growth

Japan's restructuring activities in the early 1970s mainly relied on the government, according to the size of the enterprise to reduce the capacity of the corresponding provisions, large-scale enterprises to reduce production capacity more, so many backward production capacity was stripped off at this time, and small enterprises due to their own technical defects, it is difficult to survive after the reduction, bankruptcy, merger and even change industries. In the late 1990s, the Japanese government continued to cut production capacity and planned to reduce the number of companies in the industry, transforming the country's seven largest companies into three or four. This large-scale restructuring has laid a good foundation for Japan to obtain the high-end technology ship type market and effectively improved the overall strength of the Japanese shipbuilding industry. In 2011, the Japanese government once again promoted the strategic restructuring of shipping companies to further improve the competitiveness of the international market.

Combined with the restructuring activities of Japanese and Korean shipping companies, it is not difficult to see that the complementary advantages between shipping companies and the innovation model of strong and strong alliance have promoted the development of the overall technical level of the industry and helped shipping companies to obtain the monopoly position in core competitiveness and high value-added products. At present, the development path of restructuring and integration of global shipping companies is still continuing. In March 2019, Hyundai Heavy Industries announced that it had signed a formal agreement with the Korea Development Bank (KDB), the largest shareholder of Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering, to establish a new company, Korea Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering Corporation (KSOE), in June 2019. The combination of Hyundai Heavy Industries and Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering further brings together advanced construction capabilities, strengthens the competitiveness of the Korean shipbuilding industry on a global scale, effectively alleviates problems such as low prices and reduced orders caused by excessive competition among global shipping companies, and improves the bargaining power of shipping companies. At the same time, the combination of the two will reshape the global LNG carrier market pattern, bringing greater pressure to Chinese and Japanese shipping companies. At that time, as the world's largest shipyard with the largest shipbuilding volume, Hyundai Heavy Industries Group continuously enhanced its ability to resist market risks and optimized investment in emerging markets with development potential through acquisitions and mergers, focusing on increasing investment in markets such as luxury cruise ships, large LNG carriers and offshore engineering equipment. In December 2019, Imabari Shipbuilding (Imabari Shipbuilding), Japan's largest shipbuilder, and Japan Marine United (JMU), the second largest shipbuilder, announced an agreement on the basic matters of capital and business cooperation. Imaji Shipbuilding will acquire about 30% of JMU's equity through the purchase of new shares to form a new company, which will be involved in the design, construction and sales of oil tankers, cargo ships and transport vessels. In 2019, Imaji Shipbuilding and JMU accounted for about 40% of Japan's total shipbuilding. After joining forces, the newly established joint venture is expected to hold a 10% market share in the global shipbuilding industry, further enhancing market competitiveness.

2. Supply scale

In the past two years, with the substantial growth of new ship orders, the demand for ship supporting equipment has significantly increased, and the capacity of ship distributing enterprises is difficult to rapidly improve in a short time, and the phenomenon of product price rise and supply delay is more common. In addition, due to the impact of the novel coronavirus epidemic, the production cycle of supporting equipment, logistics costs and transportation cycles have generally increased. The supply of some imported supporting equipment is more tight, the average arrival cycle of ship communication, navigation, automatic control system, electronic and electrical equipment is 1-3 months longer than normal, and the arrival cycle of ship chip, crankshaft, piston ring and control system is 3-6 months longer than normal.

In 2022, the number of ship orders in hand in China has once again exceeded 100 million deadweight tons after 6 years, and the average production guarantee coefficient of ship enterprises (the average number of orders in hand/the average amount of completion in the past three years) is about 2.7 years, and the shipping date of some enterprises has been scheduled to 2026. At present, the production tasks of ship enterprises are full, especially with the rapid growth of high-tech ship orders, the demand for skilled labor is greater. In recent years, due to the impact of the new coronavirus epidemic, there has been a large loss of migrant workers in shipping enterprises, and recently due to the increase in the number of infections, the staff attendance rate has decreased significantly, which has exacerbated the labor tension. The contradiction between full production tasks and insufficient labor supply of shipping enterprises has further expanded, and the problem of the stability of labor force has become more prominent.