Europe’s passenger ship building industry excels in innovation, as Alan Lam reports.
FULL AHEAD FOR SHIPBUILDING TECHNOLOGY T
echnological leadership and torrents of newbuilding orders are keeping Europe’s major passenger ship builders in robust health. The prognosis for the sector in the next five years – at least – is one of continuous expansion, driven by galloping demands from the cruise industry, innovation and advancing environmental protection regulations.
Monopolising cruise ship building For a while now it has been an established fact that shipyards in China, Japan and South Korea dominate the global cargo ship building 6 Industry Europe
market. However, in the passenger shipbuilding sector, especially the cruise ship segment, the situation is radically different; European builders are leaving their Asian peers trailing farther and farther behind. The growth of ocean cruise business, especially in Asia, is gravity defying. The industry has been forced to spread its limited resources thinly across the globe. This has quickly led to an unprecedented boom in newbuilding orders that exlusively benefits a handful of European builders – namely Meyer Werft of Germany, Fincantieri of Italy, and STX France – which,
together with their mostly Europe-based suppliers, monopolise the advanced cruise ship construction market. As of August 2015, no fewer than 40 vessels are on order in shipyards operated by these builders, with an accrued price tag of about €30 billion, totalling over 5.2 million gross tonnes and an accumulated capacity of more than 135,000 lower berths, a significant improvement from the same time last year, when the orderbook already stood at 31 units, totalling just under four million gross tonnes and about 100,000 lower
