Article,
STEEL: Baosteel invests in shipbuilding industry
china.org.cn (Xinhua), (March 2007)
Abstract
The Shanghai Baosteel Group Corp., China's largest steel producer,
is to cooperate with the China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC)
to construct the country's largest shipbuilding base.
According to an agreement signed, the Baosteel and CSSC will jointly
invest 10 billion RMB (1.25 billion USD) to build the No. 1 and No.
2 production lines at the Jiangnan Changxing Shipbuilding Base, located
at the estuary of the Yangtze River.
Baosteel will take a 35-percent stake and CSSC a 65-percent stake
in the two production lines, which are designed to manufacture ships
with 4.5 million dead weight tons (dwt) annually.
Construction of the lines had begun and the project had attracted
orders for ships with combined capacity of more than seven million
dwt, sources with the project was quoted as saying by China Securities
Journal.
CSSC, parent company of 60 subsidiaries covering ship building, ship
repair, research and development and offshore engineering, posted
a profit of more than five billion RMB in 2006, more than 60 times
that of 1999 when it was established.
CCSC has finished manufacturing 103 new ships for civil use, about
6.02 million dead weight tons (dwt) in total, in 2006, accounting
for 43 percent of China's total output and 8.2 percent of the world's
total.
CSSC became the world's third largest shipbuilding conglomerate in
2006, behind the Republic of Korea's Hyundai Heavy Industries and
Japan's Imabari Shipbuilding Company.
Baosteel is one of the most profitable steel enterprises in the world
with an annual production capacity of over 20 million tons. It ranked
296th on the 2006 list of Fortune 500 companies.
Besides iron and steel production, the conglomerate, established in
1998, is also involved in trade, finance, engineering, information
and the processing of steel products.
