Work Boat World Editorial – January 2015
As has become usual with our January issue, we feature the vessels, their builders and suppliers which we judge to be the best of those we have published in the preceding year.
As in 2013, for 2014 we have researched this selection much more thoroughly than previously. This has involved creating an enormous spreadsheet listing of all the vessels, their specifications and practically all their suppliers. This has been a fascinating and, as it turned out, very useful exercise.
It has made it much easier for us to compare apples with apples and enabled a fairer selection of the best in each category.
As we publish far more vessel reviews than our competitors, this selection provides our readers with a very broad overview of the commercial vessel market. It also means that the vessels, builders and suppliers that we select as the best in each category really are the best.
A number of interesting trends that have emerged from our analysis have continued. The first is that the vessels we review are getting steadily larger year by year. They are also generally becoming more versatile.
Interestingly, the top half dozen or so suppliers in each category still tend to feature across the geographical and vessel type board with almost monotonous regularity. This is happening irrespective of the steady trend eastwards in shipbuilder location.
Also interestingly, but not surprisingly, as the vessels become larger, is the continuing trend towards a higher proportion of steel vessels among those reviewed.
The statistics we have recorded in our spreadsheets are becoming increasingly useful. Trends are now easier to identify and market share is much more accurately quantifiable. These statistics will, in future, be made available to vessel owners and our advertisers for their own edification.
Those companies that have been declared the "Best" in their sector have certainly earned that accolade. We congratulate them.
I clearly remember arguing with two directors of a large German shipbuilding company in September 1994 at the SMM exhibition.
Their thesis was that the Chinese would never make it as ship builders. They claimed they had no technical skills and would have to stick to rough old bulkers. They were adamant that the Chinese could never build a container ship, a gas tanker or, heaven forbid, a cruise liner.
As it happened, the company those experts directed went bankrupt soon after amid massive recriminations over corruption and mis-use of state aid, not to mention complete incompetence.
Well, two decades forward, let us look at the situation. Only the very strongest German shipbuilders have survived – many have fallen by the wayside. On the contrary, the Chinese, as I predicted, have become the world's biggest shipbuilding nation.
Not only that but, contrary to my German friends' expectations, they have demonstrated some very impressive innovation. Ironically, the top German engine and equipment manufacturers have done well from the rise of Chinese shipbuilding.
While China's cargo ships, passenger vessels and work boats are very competitive and of ever increasing quality, it is their warships that are now worrying their potential enemies, particularly the Americans.
Chinese warships and their weaponry are very innovative and technically advanced. They have learnt quickly from American electronic inventions and have rapidly developed that knowledge into an impressive array of high-tech defence hardware.
That is something for the defence planners of America and its allies to analyse and adapt to. Meanwhile, in civilian/commercial shipbuilding, China is slipping further ahead.
The previous issue of Work Boat World presented some of the latest offerings from China's many and prolific work boat builders and suppliers. There was some impressive stuff there.
Neil Baird
