General Maritime News

Of some big ones in the process of M&A this year, Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering (DSME) is attracting much attention.

The time is ripe for discussing the second bid for DSME after the attempt of Hanwha Group to take over the DSME ended fruitless in January 2009.  

Samsung Heavy Industries paid 365% of basic salary as a profit sharing (PS) bonus to its employees on Feb. 5th.

As a reward of all-time high performance last year, 300% of basic wage as a bonus and 65% as an incentive for achieving safety and cost reduction goal, total of 365% added to monthly payment was given out to 13,000 employees of Samsung.

It was revealed last week that Korean major shipbuilder Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering (DSME) has numerous flaws in its safety measures.

After Korean Ministry of Labor started conducting the special safety supervision on DSME, more than 1,200 cases of violation of the industrial health and safety act have been found.

The labor ministry formed a special task force which is made up of 30 national experts including a labor supervisor in charge of the industrial health and safety after the recent fatal accidents at DSME took lives of four workers in succession. The task force carried out the special supervision since January 25th.

NYK has changed orders for series of containerships in South Korea and Japan to other vessel types as it looks to scale back its liner operations.

The Japanese shipowner has opted to switch three 4,500-teu containerships on order at Hyundai Heavy Industries into capesize bulkers.

The idle containership fleet has fallen by nearly 50 vessels since the beginning of this year.

A total of 532 boxships are presently laid-up, 30 less than two weeks ago and down from 581 at the start of 2010.

AXS-Alphaliner says the “first significant decline” in the volume of tied up tonnage post crash comes as operators are reactivating their own ships.

European Union shipbuilders are investigating deals struck by non-European competitors amid claims yards are deliberately taking on loss-making work.

The Community of European Shipyards Association is probing recent deals to establish true cost after members complained of “irrationally low-priced contracts”.

South Korea's Daesun Shipbuilding & Engineering made a public announcement on Jan. 29th that it had cancelled a bulker newbuilding contract with a European shipowner Bright Navigation.

Daesun had signed a KRW 39bn (USD 33.35m) contract of building bulkers with the shipowner in May, 2008.

The cold weather in Denmark and the fact that the fleet of icebreakers have a five-day readiness period has fuelled the debate on the governmental icebreaker service, which is paid by the Danish ports and their costumers.

The Association of Danish Ports has again raised their voice, claiming that it is unfair to pay an annual fee of DKK 20 million to keep the three old icebreakers ready for service when there is no need for the icebreakers anymore.

Dongkuk Steel took its first step to produce high value-added steel plates by conducting heating furnace test run at its Dangjin mill. Its phase-one normalizing heating process trial production was also conducted successfully.

Dongkuk Steel is accelerating steel plate materials production and technology development such as TMCP (Thermo Mechanical Controlled Process) steel and heat treated materials after the test run with heat treated steel plates on January 4th.The South Korean steel mill plans to enhance the proportion of high-quality steel production to more than 50% of its entire output.

China's iron ore imports grew solidly by 41.6% in 2009 from 2008 to reach an all-time high of 627.78 million tons, according to an announcement made recently by China's General Administration of Customs.

While iron ore imports by Japan and Europe remained stagnant reflecting the global economic recession, those by China sustained strong growth on the back of robust domestic demand.The brisk performance of China turned out a main factor behind firm charter markets for Capesize and other bulkers in 2009.