The real winter of shipbuilding industry will be after 20 1 1 year.
China Economic Weekly reporter Zhou Haibin Intern Fu Shidi Wu Chunwei/Beijing Report
Although the company still has a large number of lamps and lanterns orders to complete, Zhou Xin is still not practical.
For half a year, he has been running back and forth in Shanghai, Nantong and Taizhou, busy talking about the cooperation of supporting lamps with shipyards with new orders. As the sales manager of Shanghai Electrical Equipment Manufacturing Co., Ltd., Zhou is worried that this leading enterprise in the marine lighting industry will have to travel around two or three years later because of the scarcity of orders this year.
"As a supplier of marine lamps, our peak period was in 2007, when dozens of ships signed contracts. However, since the second half of last year, this situation has been very rare, and usually several ships have signed contracts. The decline in orders is very large. " Zhou told China Economic Weekly, "At present, funds are slowly withdrawn and prices are low. For example, some contracts signed before, now the shipyard requires us to reduce the price and reduce the price on the basis of the original contract. "
The life of marine lamps suppliers is hard, which reflects the depression of the whole shipbuilding industry from one side. Due to the depressed shipping market, shipowners' assets have shrunk dramatically, and financing channels have been blocked. In the first seven months of this year, cases of "order cancellation" and "contract renegotiation" have obviously increased, and the pressure on China shipyards to cancel ship holding orders has increased.
At present, the shipbuilding industry in China is experiencing a cold winter?
"Due to the characteristics of the shipbuilding industry, it may be a real cold winter after 20 1 1. I hope that with the recovery of the world economy, through the introduction of policies in these two or three years, China's shipbuilding industry will spend the cold winter as soon as possible. " Jinlian Wang, secretary general of China Shipbuilding Industry Association (74.86%,-1.94%, -2.53%), told China Economic Weekly.
Orders are reduced by more than 90%
Signs of depression have emerged.
"Very depressed." Xu Dan, assistant general manager of Huatai Shipping Company, said, "The market will not improve in the short term."
"Since the first half of 2009, the market has been relatively depressed, and the shipbuilding industry has been affected by the macro economy and the shipping market, so it is naturally relatively depressed." Liao Yu Wei, deputy director of China Shipbuilding Industry Economic Research Center affiliated to China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation, explained to China Economic Weekly.
In Jinlian Wang's view, the impact of the financial crisis on the shipbuilding industry mainly has three aspects: "First, it is difficult to place orders. From September last year to the first half of this year, global orders decreased by more than 90%, and orders from South Korea, Japan and China decreased significantly; Second, financing is difficult. The shipbuilding industry has a high demand for financing, usually hundreds of millions or billions. After the financial crisis, financing is very difficult, which directly affects shipbuilding; Third, it is difficult to deliver the ship. Without cargo transportation, shipowners don't need ships. Therefore, those who have already made a contract will do everything possible to delay delivery or even cancel the contract. In addition, ship prices have also dropped sharply, and some ship prices have even dropped by 30%. "
"Difficult to order, difficult to finance and difficult to deliver the ship" has put a triple yoke on the shipbuilding industry in China. At present, the busy scene in the shipyard can't cover up the difficulties on the way forward for the shipbuilding industry.
"If a shipyard wants to survive, it must have enough orders. If there is no order, how can you support your team and shipyard? " Xu Dan revealed the secret of the private shipyard. "Many shipowners have cancelled their orders, but shipowners have high requirements on the quality of ships under construction, and it is difficult for shipyards to advance their progress. Some shipowners also talk to the shipyard about the ship price, demanding that the price must be reduced! "
Overcapacity160,000 tons.
According to the statistics of China Shipbuilding Industry Association, among the 70 shipbuilding enterprises under key monitoring, the shipbuilding completion in the first half of the year was12.33 million dwt, up 60.2% year-on-year; New ship orders were 5.46 million deadweight tons, down 80.7% year-on-year; By the end of June, the order for hand-held boats was167.93 million dwt, which was significantly lower than that at the beginning of the year.
Orders are getting less and less, but more and more ships are being built. The disparity makes this set of data look "shocking".
"In the past few years, the shipyard's production capacity has expanded rapidly and the shipbuilding completion has increased rapidly. The number of ships produced exceeds the number of orders received, and the number of hand-held orders will inevitably continue to decrease. " Liao Yu Wei analyzed.
As a matter of fact, as early as two years ago, the China Air Transport Association issued early warnings for many times, paying attention to the possible overcapacity.
According to a survey conducted by China Economic Weekly, Taizhou, Zhejiang, which is known as the largest small ship manufacturing center in the world, currently has more than 6,543.8+000 ship repair enterprises and more than 70 supporting enterprises. "Build a ship first and then find a buyer" is the usual practice of Taizhou Shipyard, which once seized the market opportunity. However, this practice does not work now. It is reported that there are as many as 84 ships without buyers in Taizhou at present, which not only occupies tens of billions of yuan, but also costs millions of yuan to maintain a ship every month. Due to the break of some enterprises' capital chains, unfinished ships have also begun to appear.
"Ship products are not sold by production like home appliances, but by sales, and shipbuilding is only done by contracts. However, in the past few years, the shipbuilding industry was very popular, so there was a phenomenon of fixed sales by production. " Jinlian Wang explained. It is the "fixed sales by production" that has led to many enterprises building commercial ships in a difficult situation.
Xu Dan revealed that "due to the rapid development of shipbuilding industry in the past two years, some small factories also took the opportunity to expand, and some even set up factories on beaches and beaches without any quality assurance. During the financial crisis, these shipyards may be closed one after another. "
It is not difficult to see that behind the overcapacity of shipbuilding industry, there are both the impulse of private capital to seek profits and the blind pursuit of GDP by local governments. Liao said: "The threshold of China shipbuilding industry is not very high. The local government's supervision of some local enterprises may not be enough for GDP. "
The competent authorities have been worried about overcapacity in the shipbuilding industry. On July 22nd, Zhu, spokesman of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said that under normal circumstances, the effective demand for ships is about 50 million tons a year, but the ship production capacity has reached 66 million tons, which means that the excess capacity of the shipbuilding industry is about 6,543,806 tons, accounting for 654.38+0/4 of the total production capacity.
When will winter come?
On the one hand, the international freight volume has shrunk sharply, and the demand for ships has decreased; On the one hand, shipbuilding enterprises have a serious overcapacity. The superposition of double factors makes some domestic shipbuilding enterprises worry that there will be no ships to build in a few years.
"Because the ship has a long construction period, its ability to cope with the financial crisis is relatively lagging behind. Since the financial crisis broke out last year, it has not had much impact on the production of shipbuilding industry, because there were many contracts at hand two or three years ago, and the contracts set three years ago were delivered this year. Therefore, the scale and indicators of our newly released shipbuilding economy have increased by about 30%. " Jinlian Wang told China Economic Weekly that although the shipping industry has been affected, the real impact has not yet arrived.
"At present, we have a saying that the shipbuilding industry has just entered the cold winter, and the real cold winter and the coldest time have not yet arrived." Liao stressed.
However, now that the global economy is in a state of slow recovery, will the shipbuilding industry stabilize and improve accordingly?
In an exclusive interview with China Economic Weekly, Jinlian Wang said, "Recently, some shipping companies have received large orders. For example, Zhejiang Golden Bay signed more than 30 bulk carriers with orders of more than 6 million tons; Jiangsu Rong Sheng Heavy Industry signed an order with Oman shipowners for four 400,000-ton super-large ore carriers, one of which was worth more than 654.38 billion US dollars. However, on the whole, the ship market has not recovered. The above is just an example, and the order has dropped sharply. Most shipyards can't receive orders. It is still too early to say that the ship market has recovered. "
"The shipping market rebounded in the first half of the year, but it can only be said that it is a rebound, not a recovery, and it is impossible to form a sustained boom. The whole market is still in a relatively depressed state. Since June and July, some orders have been released, which can't be called recovery, but the market activity is improving, and the inquiries of shipowners are obviously increasing. In the first few months of this year, no shipowner came to make an inquiry. " Liao told China Economic Weekly.
When does late winter begin?
Liao Yu Wei told China Economic Weekly: "Now we still have orders in hand, so there should be no major problems this year and next year. After the hand-held orders are used up, if no new orders come in, it is the time to really test the shipbuilding industry. The bigger difficulty is behind, probably after 20 1 1 year. "
An insider of DNV, one of the most important classification societies in the world, said in an interview with China Economic Weekly that the shipbuilding industry is still in a prosperous stage, and there will be a shipbuilding peak in 20 1 1 year, and these orders were signed before the financial crisis, and the delivery date was basically 20 12 years ago. Therefore, for shipyards in China, shipbuilding will be realized in the next two years. This phenomenon means that under the background of the global financial crisis, there will be a "sub-financial crisis" in the shipbuilding industry, which will basically come on 20 13.
"How to understand the concept of winter? If there is no order, then the cold winter has arrived now; If there is no shipbuilding, it will be 20 1 1 years later. If the economy recovers soon, orders will increase greatly in these two or three years, and the transition may be relatively smooth; If the economic recovery is slow, the shipbuilding industry will inevitably encounter difficulties in 20 12 years. " Jinlian Wang predicted.
China has ranked first in the world in new ship orders.
As early as 2008, China's shipbuilding industry has surpassed Japan and become "the second largest shipbuilding country in the world". In the first half of 2009, China Shipyard surpassed South Korea in new ship orders, ranking first in the world.
But will the long "cold winter" stop China's shipbuilding industry from catching up with South Korea?
China's shipbuilding industry, which ranks first in the world, has ushered in an era of industrial revitalization. The Plan for the Adjustment and Revitalization of Shipbuilding Industry (hereinafter referred to as the Plan) and the Detailed Rules for the Implementation of the Plan for the Adjustment and Revitalization of Shipbuilding Industry were released in February and June this year respectively.
This "Plan" is to guide the whole shipbuilding industry to upgrade its industrial structure and optimize its product structure. It is necessary to gradually transfer some low value-added products to high value-added products, and the Plan plays a guiding role. "Liao Yu Wei analysis.
When analyzing the revitalization effect of the plan, Jinlian Wang said, "First, it has a certain effect on financing. It is clearly stipulated in the plan to support the financing of the shipbuilding industry, support the shipyards with contracts, and provide timely payment and repayment guarantees for reputable shipowners. ; The second is to guide where to develop and which areas the state should focus on supporting; The third is that the state clearly stipulates that no new wharf slipway can be built, which has a positive effect on moderate investment. "
Xu Dan, who lives in Nantong, Jiangsu Province, clearly felt the benefits brought by the plan. She said, "such as tax refund. Previously, the ship could only be returned after delivery. You can do it in advance now. This is a good relief for our funding gap. " In Xu Dan's view, the feelings of some big shipyards may be more obvious. "The plan will encourage some domestic shipowners to place orders with them. Recently, some domestic shipowners have placed orders with shipyards. "
"China's shipbuilding industry has its own unique advantages. The development prospect of shipbuilding industry is good. After such a round of reshuffle, those who survive will definitely be more competitive. " Liao told China Economic Weekly that shipbuilding in China is a technology-intensive, capital-intensive and labor-intensive "three-secret" industry. Now, from the perspective of comprehensive competition, the shipbuilding industry in Europe is already in decline because of its high cost; The technical gap between China's shipbuilding industry and Japan and South Korea is getting smaller and smaller; In addition, sufficient labor force has always been an advantage of our country.
Many people in the industry are also optimistic about the future of China shipbuilding industry. "I believe the goals set in the plan can be achieved," Jinlian Wang said confidently.
Liao also said that the Medium-and Long-term Development Plan of Shipbuilding Industry (2006-20 15) proposed that "20 15 will become the most important shipbuilding country and power in the world", and this goal is still realistic. "Now the world shipbuilding industry is having a hard time. After this reshuffle, who can survive this crisis is an important force in the future competition of the shipbuilding industry. "