Kawasaki Heavy Industries drastically reorganizes the activities of construction of mercantile ships in Japan



The industrial group and navalmeccanico Japanese Kawasaki Heavy Industries (KHI) has announced a decided reorganization of own activities in Japan in the shipbuilding segment of the naval one with the transfer in China of productive ability in the field of the mercantile ships.

The plan of the group previews a reduction of the assets (cespiti and warehouse) of the segment of activity Ship & Offshore Structure through the reorganization of 30% of the national activities of shipbuilding, with the concentration of these operations in the ship yard of Sakaide (the other main navalmeccanico plant of the group in Japan is to Kobe). In the period necessary in order to put into effect this reorganization, that it is started with immediate effect, all the ability to shipbuilding of the group will be employed while in order to complete the ships that already are ordered to KHI.

Specifying that, analyzing to the market of the shipbuilding, the team of which charged job to carry out a groundbreaking examination of the division Ship & Offshore Structure it has estimated that if on one side the section of the shipping still suffers from a problem of ability excess not immediate solution, from other is opportunities offered from the increase of the question of ships for the which liquified natural gas transport and of gas of liquified oil and that other opportunities are offered also by the new norms of environmental character that have an impact on the naval field, Kawasaki Heavy Industries have explained that this has induced to decide to concentrate the activity of the yard of Sakaide on the technologists tied to the gas and on those for the reduction of the environmental impact of the ships let alone to limit the acceptance of the orders focusing itself on the store clerks for ships to gassiere (LNG, LPG, ships with dual propulsion fuel, ships fed to gas, etc).

Moreover the plan of the KHI for the navalmeccanico segment previews also an improvement of the economic results of the division thanks to the increment of the participated activity and the Chinese cooperation of Dalian COSCO KHI Ship Engineering Co. (DACKS) and Nantong COSCO KHI Ship Engineering Co. (NACKS), joint venture that the Japanese group - than it stops respective 49% and 50% of the capital - has constituted with shipowning group Chinese COSCO Shipping.

The reduction of the navalmeccanica activity in Japan will be put into effect also with the reduction of the ability to the yard of Sakaide, with uses it of a single dry dock rather than two, while new investments will be realized in China, where the yard of the DACKS will be equipped of according to dry dock. Moreover assigned of the yard of Sakaide they will be sent in China in order to form the staff of the NACKS and the DACKS and will be activated synergies in the activities of shipbuilding between the Japanese yard and the two Chinese plants, with these last ones that - for example - will realize the blocks of the hulls of the ships that will be constructed to Sakaide.

The Japanese group previews that these and other measures will allow to increase the emolument of the invested capital in the segment of the navalmeccaniche activities, with a ROIC (Return on Invested Capital) before taxes that in fiscal year 2020 are previewed will turn out advanced at least of +8%.