SHI concentrates on high value-added projects

Samsung Heavy Industries (SHI) will gear up for high value-added projects such as Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) carriers, digital instruments, deep-sea crude oil development facilities, amongst others, the president of SHI revealed on May 9.

The president of SHI, Mr. Jingwan Kim, said in a press conference that it will strive to make SHI the world's best in four areas: quality, productivity, efficiency, and added value. SHI will aim for 8 trillion won in sales and 800 billion won in ordinary profits by 2005.

SHI said that it is now in transition to a six-vessel per year building system from a four-vessel per year system, under the assumption that there will be 10 LNG vessel orders every year until 2010.

It also paved the way for building cruise ships with orders for 4 large passenger ferries from Minoan, the largest shipping company in Greece. It also received orders for four 7,400 TEU vessels from OOCL based in Hong Kong, and signed an LOI (Letter of Intent) with China Shipping Groups for a 9,000 TEU vessel.

Regarding digital instruments, Mr. Kim said that it has supplied integrated navigation and vessel control systems and voyage data recorders (VDR) on 118 vessels.

He predicted that the VDR market would grow to 3 trillion won annually as the International Maritime Organization (IMO) advocates certain mandatory equipment for vessels over 20,000 tons from 2004.

It will also increase its building capacity by 500,000 tons this year without other additional building facilities expansion with the help of TACT, an innovative and unique production technique based on IE (Industrial Engineering) methods and next generation CAD (Computer Aided Design) systems.

Mr. Kim said that the company improved its financial health by selling (accruing) Samsung Motors and receiving over 50 percent of its orders for high value-added vessels this year.