Korean Shipbuilders expand U.S. Production Operations

Major companies accelerate entry into U.S. Shipbuilding Market

Korea’s shipbuilding industry is busily moving to prepare for the “MASGA (Making American Shipbuilding Great Again) Project,” which will begin in earnest next year, by promoting Korea-U.S. shipbuilding cooperation and mutual prosperity. Major shipbuilding companies are accelerating their entry into U.S. local production bases and maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) markets, while domestically activating cooperation with small and medium shipbuilding companies to anticipate a new renaissance of K-shipbuilding.Major domestic shipbuilding companies have completed preemptive investment and cooperation system construction for entering the U.S. market as core partners of the MASGA project. HD Hyundai has built a multi-layered cooperation model by signing an agreement with Huntington Ingalls, the largest defense shipbuilding company in the United States, to build next-generation fleet oilers for the U.S. Navy, and forming a partnership with ECO Shipyard for joint construction of medium-sized container ships in the commercial vessel sector. In particular, the company has also partnered with defense technology company Anduril to target the next-generation unmanned maritime power market.

Hanwha Ocean’s moves are even more aggressive. It became the first domestic shipbuilding company to secure production and maintenance bases within the United States through the acquisition of shares in Philly Shipyard. Hanwha Ocean plans to invest $5 billion (approximately 7 trillion won) here to dramatically expand the shipyard’s annual shipbuilding capacity from the existing 1-1.5 vessels to 20 vessels. The company is already achieving substantial results by successively winning MRO projects for U.S. Navy fleet oilers including USNS Wally Schirra and USNS Yukon.

Samsung Heavy Industries, a latecomer, began with an MRO partnership with Vigor Marine Group in August and expanded its U.S. business by signing a ship design and parts supply agreement with NASSCO shipyard in December. In particular, with domestic engineering company DSEC participating together in the cooperation with NASSCO, synergy is expected from design to equipment supply.

HJ Heavy Industries’ remarkable progress is also noteworthy. The shipbuilder possesses large transport vessel construction capabilities including Dokdo-class and Marado-class vessels. It signed an intermediate maintenance contract on Dec. 15 for the 40,000-ton dry cargo and ammunition transport vessel USNS Amelia Earhart, belonging to the U.S. Navy’s Military Sealift Command and Military Surface Deployment and Distribution Command. This is the first time a domestic medium-sized shipbuilding company has entered the U.S. Navy MRO market.

Internal strengthening for enhancing the competitiveness of the overall domestic shipbuilding industry ecosystem is also being pursued in parallel. The strategy is to enhance the capabilities of the entire domestic shipbuilding industry through not only trickle-down effects from expanded U.S. orders but also mutual growth models. Samsung Heavy Industries has established a cooperation model that involves strategic business agreements with domestic mid-sized shipbuilding companies and consignment production from ship blocks to crude oil tanker construction.

Hanwha Ocean has launched the Naval Vessel MRO Cluster Council with 15 companies in the Busan-Gyeongnam region, simultaneously pursuing regional economic revitalization and supply chain stabilization, while K Shipbuilding is considering establishing a worker welfare fund through joint contributions of part of the profits with partner companies.

In the recent presidential briefing by the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Resources, Korea-U.S. shipbuilding cooperation and mutual prosperity management were addressed as key focus areas. According to the ministry, strategic investment in the United States will begin with shipbuilding as an opportunity to discover models that can provide returns to Korean companies, and plans to establish hotlines for shipbuilding cooperation between the two countries. Additionally, the plan includes actively promoting mutual growth between upstream and downstream industries by establishing export supply chain guarantee programs to support regional equipment and materials ecosystems and constructing steel-shipbuilding and shipbuilding-shipping mutual prosperity councils respectively.

Choi Kyu-jong, vice president of the Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Plant Association, said, “The full-scale implementation of the MASGA project will be a decisive turning point for the shipbuilding industry to seize the initiative in global shipbuilding hegemony competition, going beyond simply expanding orders,” adding, “We are strengthening competitiveness by reinforcing cooperation networks with the United States while enhancing domestic ecosystem capabilities.”

Source: BusinessKorea