“Our order book is full until 2011 and our capacity makes us the fourth largest builder of container ships in the world,” says Kuang-Nan Fan, Acting Chairman of the Board and President of CSBC Corporation, located in Kaohsiung, Taiwan.
The yard was established in 1937 and, through mergers in 1978, has developed into its present position and has customers worldwide. “We built our first container vessel in 1979,” continues Fan. “That was a 3,000 teu vessel.”
“Some two years ago, we decided that container vessels were to be our target market and that we would build capacity and expertise to serve this market. Today we are a 100 per cent container yard, building vessels of up to 8,200 teu,” says Fan.
We drive to the quayside where the 6,000 teu vessel Wan Hai 602 owned by Wai Hai Lines Ltd is due to leave the yard the following day to pick up her first cargo. This vessel is one in a series of four – all to DNV class. As we walk alongside the vessel, yard workers are hosing off the last remnants of construction from the deck.
When asked about the design of the vessels, Fan says all the ships are designed by the yard. “We have a design office with 250 employees that can tailor make vessels to suit customers’ needs. We are currently working on new designs for 12,500 teu vessels which will be of the right size for the new Panama Canal. These huge vessels will have a beam of 48.2 m and enormous 12-cylinder engines that will be imported from Korea or Japan. Some ports may have to upgrade with new cranes to reach across all the rows of containers,” says Fan.
The highly efficient yard has 2,400 employees at the Kaohsiung location and an additional 500 at the Keelung site. Add on to that a total of approximately 2,500 subcontractors and you realise that this is one of the most efficient yards in the world. “Our turnover rate is quite low,” continues Fan. “It’s always a challenge to retain employees when the labour market is as tight as it is today, but being a company that is fully owned by the state of Taiwan means that we can offer many social benefits in addition to the interesting and challenging work we do for demanding customers.
“Environmental considerations are very important to us and we focus on ship hydrodynamics. Here there is always room for improvements that lead to lower fuel consumption. Along the same lines, we work closely with engine manufacturers and we recently delivered a vessel whose sea trials proved that its speed was 0.5 knots higher than the contract specified, which will reduce its fuel oil consumption. We also examine the ballast water requirements and coating, and are now using silicon-based coatings. These are much more environmentally friendly and also reduce the hull drag.
“We cooperated with DNV last year on the design of 2,500 teu container vessels and we look forward to continuing to work with DNV,” concludes Kuang-Nan Fan.