Shipbuilding Industry 2020
18.02.2016
The economic crisis in the last years had a strong impact on the shipbuilding industry. The fact that the entire distribution of goods has been substantially reduced in the last years definitely and negatively influenced the entire navy sector.
The crisis continues to put pressure on developers of maritime technologies, who are struggling to find financial resources for their traditional projects, therefore being forced to further reduce the production capacities.
Even so, new opportunities have been identified in the sector. Searching for offshore resources such as the marine renewable energy definitely boosts the development of maritime related technologies.
Having that in mind the development directions are focusing on creating economies that are based on knowledge and innovation, while efficiently promoting new ideas and results of research and development projects for green energy (sustainable growth).
New challenges for EU countries
The maritime transport and by consequence the shipbuilding industry faced in the last period of time a cyclic development which can be mainly described as volatile. Container ships are mainly produced in China, Korea and Japan where almost 4/5 of the global production was transferred.
Only the high-tech projects remained in Europe. The level of specialization permitted Europeans to maintain a leading position in the design, innovation and complementary services.
Maritime technologies
500.000 people are acting in 7500 European companies in this sector. Most of them are SMEs. The entire production in the region is estimated at around 72 billion EUR. The development areas focus on ship handling processes, propulsion, communication, automation, and integrated systems. Around 70% of the entire production is destined to export.
Shipbuilding and repair industry
The Europeans are mainly investing in production o f small and medium vessels. Around 90% is meant for export.
Navy industry today
The entire existing fleet is oversized in relation to actual necessities, basically due to the reduction of global commercial volumes. In the meantime, the shipbuilding industry in Asia delivers record numbers of new vessels on the market, which had a direct impact on the transport prices that significantly decreased.
The shipbuilding industry extends itself massively to China, Korea and other developing countries while West Europe hesitates to further invest in this sector. The long production cycles and the limited number of orders within the suppliers’ chain reflect themselves in the reluctant attitude of the European companies.
The specialized segments such as cruise and auxiliary fleets are not so much affected as the sector of cargo vessels. Even so, in case of high tech or luxury ships the companies confront themselves with a relevant issue in finding the necessary financial support for creating and developing the projects.
At European level the market segment decreased with 30% in comparison with the level registered before crises.
Even so, the perspectives on long term seem to be positive.
The increasing expectations of the society with respect to environmental protection might generate the new opportunities.
The main players in the sector identified following trends and objectives to be reached till 2020:
-Promoting the navy industry as one of the strategic sectors at the European level with the main focus on security area as generator of new jobs in the region
-Navy similar to Innovation: the main priority should be to deliver products that incorporate a high level of technology based on the latest important investments in research and development
-A competitive industry: the entire restructure of the sector for creating new qualified jobs for especially in the research and development and services areas
-Specialized and Green: focus on creating products that include green technologies within the entire production process.
-Destination: export – not only for the end products but also for components
-Energetic efficiency – focus on design and development of products which should incorporate a high degree of technical solutions that are supposed to be efficient from both energetic and environmental points of view
For implementing this strategy the EMTI envisages 4 main developmental pillars:
-high qualification of personal acting in the industry
-better access to the world market
-identification of financial resources for implementing the new projects stimulation of investment in research and development
