STX Offshore & Shipbuilding traces its origins to Daedong Shipbuilding with its first site opened at Busan in 1962. This was later expanded to the site at Jinhae some 400 kilometres south east of Seoul. The large dry-dock at Jinhae was completed in 1996. In 2001 STX Shipbuilding merged Dadong Shipbuilding.
In 2008 the name was modified to become STX Offshore and Shipbuilding in recognition of the growing importance of the offshore industry for which the Busan and Dalian yard have been building vessels. The progress and expansion has continued to include STX yards at Dalian and in Europe, where they operate 18 shipyards in eight countries, but the company has kept a focus on innovation and modernisation.
Orders for ships are invariably made some time before construction. If 2009 was hard for the world's shipyards then, given the delay from contract to construction and delivery, 2010 could be even tougher.
STX expects to minimise the financial challenges with the efficiency of their built technologies. In 2004 they formally introduced a policy known as "Process Innovation" to encourage technological research and development.
The same year they developed the Skid Launch System (SLS) shipbuilding method. This allows a ship to be built on solid land without the use of expensive dry-dock space.
Assembling the components "on the hard" reduces the time to move components and personnel. Prefabricated modules and whole hull sections can be constructed and assembled more efficiently and safely.
Once the hull has been constructed it is jacked up and "skidded", with a STX proprietary equipment design, from the skid berth and loaded onto a skid barge. The barge can then be moved out to deeper water before being flooded and sunk out from under the hull to launch the vessel. The ship is then towed back alongside for completion at the outfitting quay.
The Jinhae yard's capacity to launch ships utilising the SLS method has grown from one in 2004 to five in 2005, twelve in 2006, 15 in 2007, 14 in 2008 and, with the addition of a second skid berth in late 2008, they launched 22 ships in 2009.
The yard is now capable of launching up to 30 ships per year with the SLS method. According to a 2006 media release one of the vessels launched that year, a 51,000DWT petroleum product carrier, was launched after only 30 days of work, which the yard maintains is a 40 percent reduction in the time to build such a vessel with conventional methods.
A visit to the STX Jinhae yard confirms the claims at efficiency and innovation. In late January 2010, a huge 200,000DWT bulker was taking shape in the yard's 385 by 74 by 11-metre graving dock.
A pair of 120,000DWT petroleum tankers were nearing completion alongside a nearby quay. The black hull of a 173,600-cubic metre LNG tanker, built with the ROSE technique, towered above another quay with still more ships moored alongside further out on the quay.
In the periphery of the yard variously shaped modules were being formed. At another point along the face of the central quay, a barge was secured with a ramp leading to the shore. Creeping up this ramp was a huge many-wheeled heavy-load mover.
Sung-Ho Kang, Senior Manager of the Support Division's PR team explained that the barge was delivering modules from sub contractors. These are transported to the assembly site by wheeled vehicles with the driver's cab located low so as to give the largest flat surface available to moving the blocks.
Modular construction has been utilised in shipbuilding for some time, by increasing the weight of modules that can be transported and by using off-site fabrication contractors; STX Jinhae has been able to maximise the efficiencies of this method.
Another innovation is the ROSE (Rendezvous On the Sea for Erection) method.
In March 2009, the STX erected the first 6,500-tonne ultra large vessel block of a 173,600-cubic metre LNG carrier. The block was built on land then skidded to the floating dock using a submergible heavy lift carrier and module transporter. By submerging the floating dock the ultra large block was floated for assembly with five other blocks.
Prior to this method the building and assembly of such large blocks was limited blocks of about 3,200 tonnes by the capabilities of floating cranes.
While outlooks may be gloomy in some of the world's major shipyards, the STX Offshore and Shipbuilding was buoyant in January 2010 with the announcement of new orders. The order is for an initial four 190 by 32.3-metre, 57,300DWT bulk carriers for the Turkish shipper Densa with deliveries beginning in 2011.
With the new orders, following on similar orders in December 2009, came a commitment to further research and development at their centre in Jinhae to maintain the competitive edge so important in current economic times.
Alan Haig-Brown