Thursday, December 30, 2010

Dockyard to capture new markets

Sanjeevi JAYASURIYA

Sri Lanka has not fully recovered to its full potential at the operational level in the shipping industry.

The country needs to address this as it is a serious concern for industrialists, Colombo Dockyard Managing Director and CEO Mangala P B Yapa told Daily News Business.

The time is not right for ship repairs and ship builders as shipping companies are looking at cheap yards in countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia.

“This is the reality of business,” he said.

The year 2010 was one of the most challenging years for Colombo Dockyard PLC (CDL). The company carried out 152 ship repairs in 2010 compared to 148 in 2009.

The CDL has adopted a two fold strategy to face the challenging situation. One is the internal focus to raise standards to increase the level of efficiency in all aspects.

This will enable to compete aggressively whilst offering an improved value proposition to customers. The other strategy is to build a strong relationship with customers.

CDL is looking at new markets which it has not been able to attract in the past.

“We consider Far East as a potential market. We have already attracted three customers from Greek ship owners for the last two months for dry dock and repairs. We will continue being market-oriented.

“We have been mainly focusing on petroleum tankers especially from India where there is a change in fleet composition.

The LPG and other chemical tankers are an opportunity at present. With improved safety and quality standards we could attract this type of business,” he said.

The first LPG tanker will arrive in mid January 2011.

Company had a successful marketing launch in Singapore under the theme Ayubowan Singapore to attract ship owners. Though there is a drop in revenue in the ship repair business this year compared to last year, CDL is confident that it could turnaround and have better performance in 2011. The ship building business recorded one of the most successful years in 2010.

CDL was able to deliver five vessels this year. The total contract value was US $ 115 million.
It was able to secure three more large ship building contracts from Singapore.

It is yet to deliver four vessels from previous stock one vessel to India, two to Singapore and one to Sri Lanka.

The company directs excess resources for ship building when necessary adding more product portfolio.

source - www.dailynews.lk

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