On February 2nd, China’s International Marine Containers (Group) Ltd (CIMC) announced they had reached an agreement with Russia’s MNP Group, to merge U.S.A’s Friede Goldman United (F&G) by 75% shares valued at $75m.

F&G is one of the leading offshore plant enterprises in the world, with 60 years experience in offshore platform design and building, especially in mobile drill platform. So far F&G has involved in the design and building of over 100 offshore platforms.

CIMC’s stock rose by 4.93% yesterday.

If the merging is successful, CIMC will own its chain of offshore drilling platform design and building.

As reported earlier, CIMC has finished merging on Yantai Raffles on January 18th 2009, which is the largest offshore plant builder in China. CIMC occupied 50.01% of Raffles’ equity.

Beside, CIMA holds 9% shares of Hongkong’s TSC Offshore Group, which ranks 3rd in global offshore field. Raffles owns 8% of TSC as well.

There are few enterprises that can design drilling platforms in the world due to its hi-tech factors. Most of them are located in U.S.A., Europe, and Singapore such as F&G, MSC, Baker Marine and GVA.

The merging will trigger more offshore orders for CIMC, as well as for compatriot Raffles and TSC.

CIMC will become a comprehensive offshore enterprise with great advantage. As its rivals, Korea’s Samsung Heavy Industry and Singapore’s Sembcorp are capable of building drilling platforms but weak in design while Keppel Corporation is committed to design but not as perfect as F&G’s performance.

In future, CIMC may be able to build a series of hi-tech offshore plants, such as LNG carrier, LNG-FPSO, FPSO, jack up, and semi-submersible drilling platform. Nowadays, Samsung Heavy Industry is the sole enterprise that can build LNG-FPSO.

In summary, CIMC is considered to be a new star in offshore field. The group will march to enter ‘Big 4’ of global offshore market valued about $300bn, even to the leadership.

Source: Asiasis

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