rongsheng shipyard china free sample

You can use this royalty-free editorial photo "Ship is being built at a shipyard of Rongsheng Heavy Industries in Nantong city, east China"s Jiangsu province, 12 October 2012" for personal and non-commercial purposes according to the Standard License. This stock image may be used to illustrate stories in newspaper and magazine articles and blog posts. Please note that editorial stock photos may not be used in advertising or promotional material.

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Shares in China Rongsheng Heavy Industries Group Holdings Ltdtumbled 18 percent on Monday after the U.S. securities regulator accused a company controlled by the shipbuilder"s chairman of insider trading ahead of China"s CNOOC Ltd"sbid for Canadian oil company Nexen Inc.Labourers work at a Rongsheng Heavy Industries shipyard in Nantong, Jiangsu province May 21, 2012. REUTERS/Aly Song

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed a complaint in a U.S. court on Friday against a company controlled by Rongsheng Chairman Zhang Zhirong, and other traders, accusing them of making more than $13 million from insider trading ahead of CNOOC’s $15.1 billion bid for Nexen.

On Monday, Rongsheng shares dropped as much as 18 percent to HK$1.15, a record low, leaving the company with a market capitalization of just over $1 billion. The company also issued a profit warning, saying first-half earnings would fall sharply as a result of a global shipbuilding downturn, a factor that has already pushed its shares down more than 75 percent in the past year.

Rongsheng - which entered a strategic cooperation agreement with CNOOC in 2010 - said in a Hong Kong filing that it did not expect the U.S. investigation to affect its operations. It said Zhang did not have an executive role in the company.

“The news around the chairman comes on the back of other operational and credibility issues,” Barclays said in a note to clients. “We think China Rongsheng presents significant company-specific risk.”

Zhang was ranked the 22th richest Chinese person by Forbes Magazine in September 2011. But his net worth fell by more than half in the past year to $2.6 billion in March 2012 as shares of Rongsheng tumbled.

CNOOC said on July 23 it had agreed to acquire Nexen for $15.1 billion, China’s biggest foreign takeover bid. Shares of Nexen jumped almost 52 percent that day.

RUGAO, China/SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Deserted flats and boarded-up shops in the Yangtze river town of Changqingcun serve as a blunt reminder of the area"s reliance on China Rongsheng Heavy Industries Group, the country"s biggest private shipbuilder.A view of the Rongsheng Heavy Industries shipyard is seen in Nantong, Jiangsu province December 4, 2013. REUTERS/Aly Song

The shipbuilder this week predicted a substantial annual loss, just months after appealing to the government for financial help as it reeled from industry overcapacity and shrinking orders. Rongsheng lost an annual record 572.6 million yuan ($92 million) last year, and lost 1.3 billion yuan in the first half of this year.

While Beijing seems intent to promote a shift away from an investment-heavy model, with companies reliant on government cash injections, some analysts say Rongsheng is too big for China to let fail.

Local media reported in July that Rongsheng had laid off as many as 8,000 workers as demand slowed. Three years ago, the company had about 20,000 staff and contract employees. This week, the shipbuilder said an unspecified number of workers had been made redundant this year.

A purpose-built town near the shipyard’s main gate, with thousands of flats, supermarkets and restaurants, is largely deserted. Nine of every 10 shops are boarded up; the police station and hospital are locked.

“In this area we’re only really selling to workers from the shipyard. If they’re not here who do we sell to?” said one of the few remaining shopkeepers, surnamed Sui, playing a videogame at his work-wear store. “I know people with salaries held back and they can’t pay for things. I can’t continue if things stay the same.”

In the shadow of the shipyard gate, workers told Reuters the facility was still operating but morale was low, activity was slowing with the lack of new orders and some payments to workers had been delayed.

“Without new orders it’s hard to see how operations can continue,” said one worker wearing oil-spattered overalls and a Rongsheng hardhat, adding he was still waiting to be paid for September. He didn’t want to give his name as he feared he could lose his job.

“Morale in the office is quite low, since we don’t know what is the plan,” said a Rongsheng executive, who declined to be named as he is not authorized to speak to the media. “We have been getting orders but can’t seem to get construction loans from banks to build these projects.”

While Rongsheng has won just two orders this year, state-backed rival Shanghai Waigaoqiao Shipbuildinghas secured 50, according to shipbroker data. Singapore-listed Yangzijiang Shipbuildinghas won more than $1 billion in new orders and is moving into offshore jack-up rig construction, noted Jon Windham, head industrials analyst at Barclays in Hong Kong.

Frontline, a shipping company controlled by Norwegian business tycoon John Fredriksen, ordered two oil tankers from Rongsheng in 2010 for delivery earlier this year. It now expects to receive both of them in 2014, Frontline CEO Jens Martin Jensen told Reuters.

Greek shipowner DryShips Inchas also questioned whether other large tankers on order will be delivered. DryShips said Rongsheng is building 43 percent of the Suezmax vessels - tankers up to 200,000 deadweight tons - in the current global order book. That"s equivalent to 23 ships, according to Rongsheng data.

Speaking at a quarterly results briefing last month, DryShips Chief Financial Officer Ziad Nakhleh said Rongsheng was “a yard that, as we stated before, is facing difficulties and, as such, we believe there is a high probability they will not be delivered.” DryShips has four dry cargo vessels on order at the Chinese firm.

Rongsheng declined to comment on the Dryships order, citing client confidentiality. “For other orders on hand, our delivery plan is still ongoing,” a spokesman said.

At least two law firms in Shanghai and Singapore are acting for shipowners seeking compensation from Rongsheng for late or cancelled orders. “I’m now dealing with several cases against Rongsheng,” said Lawrence Chen, senior partner at law firm Wintell & Co in Shanghai.

Billionaire Zhang Zhirong, who founded Rongsheng in 2005 and is the shipyard"s biggest shareholder, last month announced plans to privatize Hong Kong-listed Glorious Property Holdingsin a HK$4.57 billion ($589.45 million) deal - a move analysts said could raise money to plug Rongsheng"s debts.

Meanwhile, Rongsheng’s shipyard woes have already pushed many people away from nearby centers, and others said they would have to go if things don’t pick up. Some said they hoped the local government might step in with financial support.

The Rugao government did not respond to requests for comment on whether it would lend financial or other support to Rongsheng. Annual reports show Rongsheng has received state subsidies in the past three years.

The exodus has left row upon row of deserted apartments, with just a few old garments strewn on the floor and empty name tags to show for what was a bustling community before China’s economic growth began to slow and credit tightened at a time when global shipping, too, turned down.

In 2004, when the government decided to promote him from his position of president of China"s top yard Shanghai Waigaoqiao Shipbuilding (SWS) to lead the China State Shipbuilding Corporation in Beijing, he opted to go private.

Five years on, when his foreign counterparts visit his yard in Rugao city in Jiangsu province, they exclaim: "OIC!", a term they coined to describe Chen"s achievement as "only in China".

HONG KONG/BEIJING, July 8 (Reuters) – An appeal for government financial support from China’s biggest private shipbuilder presents authorities with some stark choices between protecting a big employer and its jobs or letting the firm go under to ease pressure on a sector suffering from overcapacity and sharply falling new orders.

Since Beijing appears intent on telling investors it is serious about changing the investment-led growth model of the world’s second-biggest economy and controlling a credit splurge, it may seem like the writing is on the wall for China Rongsheng Heavy Industries Group.

Yet analysts say the government is more likely than not to judge that Rongsheng, which employs around 20,000 workers and has received state patronage, is too big and well connected to fail.

Supporting Rongsheng will not mean China’s economic reform plans are derailed, they say. Instead, it will mean reforms will be gradual and the government will cherry-pick firms it wants to support, which will exclude the small, private shipbuilders that have been folding in waves.

“Rongsheng is a flagship in the industry,” said Lawrence Li, an analyst with UOB Kay Hian in Shanghai. “The government will definitely provide assistance if companies like this are in trouble.”

Analysts say Rongsheng is possibly the largest casualty of a sector that has grown over the past decade into the world’s biggest shipbuilding industry by construction capacity. Amid a global shipping downturn, new orders for Chinese builders fell by half last year. In Rongsheng’s case, it won orders worth $55.6 million last year, compared with a target of $1.8 billion.

Rongsheng appealed for government aid on Friday, saying it was cutting its workforce and delaying payments to suppliers to deal with tightened cash flow.

In the prospectus for its initial public offer, Rongsheng said it received 520 million yuan of subsidies from the Rugao city government in the southern province of Jiangsu, where the company is based.

The state funds paid for research and development of new types of vessels, and were based in part on the “essential role we play in the local economy”, Rongsheng said.

China’s shipbuilding woes are partly of its own making. A global downturn in demand has hammered the sector since 2008, but a national obsession for global dominance in some industries led China to declare in the early 2000s that it wanted to be the world’s top shipbuilding nation by 2015.

As the world’s largest shipbuilder, it had 1,647 shipyards in 2012, data from China Association of the National Shipbuilding Industry showed. Over 60 percent of its shipbuilders are based in Rongsheng’s province of Jiangsu.

The rapid increase in capacity combined with a global shipping downturn is now taking its toll. A fifth of China’s shipbuilders lost money in 2012, data from the association of shipbuilders showed, nearly doubling from 2011.

Despite this, the government is providing support for the industry, a sign it will also support Rongsheng given its prominence in the sector, analysts said.

Export-Import Bank of China, which lends in support of government policy goals, said in January it will increase lending for the buying or leasing of ships by around $3 billion this year to support Chinese shipbuilders.

Beijing also devised a plan last year to subsidise early disposal of ships in use for over 15 years, with the state paying for 20 percent of the cost incurred, the Economics Information Daily, a newspaper run by state news agency Xinhua, said this month. The paper said the plan had not been announced due to conflicting views. It was not clear if China’s new government had vetoed the plan designed by their predecessors.

Analysts say what separates Rongsheng from many other companies are its connections with the government and state banks. Rongsheng’s Chief Executive Chen Qiang, for example, enjoys “special government allowances” granted by China’s cabinet, the firm’s annual reports say.

Rongsheng also said in its IPO prospectus that it has two five-year financing deals with Export-Import Bank of China that end in 2014 and in 2015, and a 10-year agreement with Bank of China starting from 2009.

After all, local government coffers will suffer the biggest blow if Rongsheng goes bust. The firm had 168 million yuan of deferred income taxes in 2012.

“Do people expect one of the largest shipyards in the world is going to stop building ships completely with state-of-the-art, brand new facilities?” said Martin Rowe, managing director of global shipping services provider Clarkson Asia Ltd. “I think it’s highly unlikely.” (Reporting by Yimou Lee in HONG KONG and Koh Gui Qing in BEIJING; Editing by Neil Fullick)

The demographic status of the world"s population is shown in the Figure 8. World population as that of July 2010 was approximately 6.83 billion (Geohive, 2011) and is going to grow up: the mid-range estimate is 9.08 billion people by 2050 (DSD, 2008). Due to the fact that the main countries of growing population are India, Nigeria, North America, Pakistan, Indonesia, and China, main trade directions servicing the development of regional industries and international companies have to be clear. If China add extra billion tons of the trade in the nearest future the foreign shipping companies will not win much because of Chinese policy to enlarge its own fleet for servicing its own internal and external trade.

There are many reasons for market uncertainty that could push oil prices higher or lower than current expectations. Among the uncertainties are: the continued unrest in producing countries and its potential impact on supply; decisions by key OPEC member countries regarding their production response to the global recovery in oil demand and recent supply losses; the rate of economic recovery, both domestically and globally; fiscal issues facing national and sub-national governments; and China"s efforts to address concerns regarding its growth and inflation rates.

The world tanker fleet is totalling 441 million deadweight tons depends on oil demand. 10.2% of it is single hull tankers that are in the phase-out state. 129 million dwt (or 29.1% of the existing fleet) of coming tankers are waiting on-order. Of course, some of new orders will be cancelled or it will be agreed on the postponement of their delivery time. Some of existing tankers have to be refitted according to new requirements for CO2, SOx, NOx emissions or dismantled. Tanker Fright market, slow steaming, floating storage, changing trade patterns from Latin America and West Africa to China also should positively and better than expected influence the world’s tanker fleet in prospect. The analysis of offshore investment trends shows its strong continuous growth to 360 billion US dollars by 2013. Offshore drilling in deepwater is expected to grow stronger than in shallow water. This together with sufficient oil prices to develop offshore projects and delayed large-scale projects will result in increase in new building demand for offshore in the long-term perspective.

The world coal and iron ore trade demand depends very much on the biggest purchaser China. Coal import increased to 100 million tons in 2009 and tends to rise upwards until 2020. In 2009, iron ore import demand to China reached 2/3 of the world’s iron ore trade. The second biggest purchaser in the world is India that is looking for new suppliers in Russia and Latin America seeking to fill increased needs. Despite the fact that bulker market shows recovery signals since the end of 2009 the nearest future of shipbuilders focused on bulker carriers is not yet safe. During the first four months of 2010, it contracted 185 new bulk carriers (15 million dwt). Though prices of new building incentives have fallen by 30% the order book for 2010-2014 is overfilled: 3286 new bulkers (43.6% of existing bulker fleet) totalling 287.1 million dwt (59.7%)(CESA AR, 2010). This means that shipyards of China, S. Korea, Japan and new players focused on production of bulkers should turn to the building of other ship types. Consequently, the competition among high added value shipbuilders should be more intense.

Such a danger as “tenth wave” is poising now over the global shipbuilding industry. What shipyards of what countries will survive it? It might be that some countries will decide to reduce shipbuilding capacity or even close it before their shipyards collapse.

Productivity is influenced by technology, facilities, management competence, work organization, work practice, the level of workers’ skills and motivation. The level of the shipyard’s technology is one of the most important factors influencing the cost competitiveness, especially for the large enterprise.

Technology benchmark provided by T. Lamb shows very interesting results forcing to think what is more valuable for the shipyards competing in the market. It compares typical production elements such as steelwork and outfitting production, other pre-erection, ship construction, layout & environment, design & drafting, and organisation/operating of the main shipbuilding countries/regions. The highest overall level has Japan (4.43), the second – S. Korea (4.00), then Europe (3.4), and the lowest is of China (2.88) (Lamb, 2007). Is China a winner just because of low labour price? Or is Chinese labour cost lower because of small investment? Another reason impacting (more specifically – distorting) the competitiveness of shipyards is State support that goes to increasing of the national shipbuilding capacity. For example, over the past decade Korea almost quadrupled its production capacities while Japan and Europe kept stable production volumes. Since 1998 to 2009, S. Korean shipbuilding capacity grew by 10.8 million CGT and Chinese - by 7.9 million CGT (ECORYS SCS, 2009). China and S. Korea continues to follow a highly aggressive expansion path. Under Chinese "Shipbuilding industry adjustment promotion plan" the government has defined provision of operating funds to shipyards and expansion of financial support to owners who order export ships. Not only these countries but also new players such as Brazil, Turkey, India, etc provide huge amounts of support and financial assistance to their domestic producers by using various forms of subsidies including investment aid, loans and payment guarantees to shipbuilders, suppliers, governmental bailouts, subsidies on ship prices for domestic ocean going ships’ buyers, mandatory requirements to order ships at domestic yards and subsidized loans for domestically built ships, direct loans and debt guarantees to ship-owners, etc.

In such conditions, keeping a competitive edge of European shipyards becomes more and more complicate. Despite of the reduced order book Europe chooses quality and excellence over the low costs as the main strategic point of further development of the shipbuilding industry.

The other side of the coin we don’t so often see is the impact on shipbuilders themselves. The boom in building led to a boom in construction of shipbuilding capacity, mostly in China. This epitomizes the asset investment-led growth of Chinese manufacturing over the last decade and is an example of the how overcapacity is hitting a wide range of Chinese manufacturing.

The article picks on China Rongsheng as an example; as orders have dried up and buyers fail to pay, the manufacturing company is facing ruin, yet is being propped up by local government. Net debt is now said to be 162% of shareholders’ funds, up from 129% in 2011. Overdue receivables have surged 68 times over that period to Rmb 1.2 billion.

Fixed asset investment has grown 12-fold over the past decade and is estimated to exceed Rmb 18 trillion ($3 trillion) this year. China Confidential, quoted in the article, notes that more than three-quarters of companies in China’s heavy industries face serious overcapacity.

Li Yanqing, director of China Shipbuilding Information Center, said low value-added products like bulk carriers, oil tankers and container ships, dominated shipyards. Li said Chinese shipbuilders were far behind Japan and the ROK in production management, work efficiency and developing high value-added products for ocean engineering projects.

The State Council, or China"s cabinet, issued a three-year plan to consolidate the industry in August, which includes measures to halt approvals for new shipbuilding projects and freeze credit support for expansion of facilities.

Chang Jianhua, Rongsheng"s vice president, told Xinhua in August that the company plans to accelerate development of ocean engineering products, which is estimated to bring 40 percent of firm"s total income by 2015.

By then, the profit margin of Rongsheng"s shipbuilding business is expected to rise to 20 percent from the current 5 to 10 percent. "The more difficulties, the more opportunities," said Chang.

However, ocean engineering products demand high technology, which is an achilles" heel for the country"s shipbuilders, especially private yards, said Ni Tao, general manager of the China Ocean Shipping Company.

Rongsheng invested heavily in a new research and development (R&D) hub in Singapore last year besides having one in Shanghai. It wants to combine foreign know-how with Chinese national identity to guarantee a sustainable revival.

"Traditionally, Singapore is a talent pool for ocean engineering product development and management. We set up the new R&D center there, which allows Rongsheng to speed up the product-development cycle," said Chen Qiang.