ABSTRACT
The current world shipbuilding situation is pervaded with uncertainty at best and downright pessimism and despondency at worst. As the overriding determinant of shipbuilding activity, demand is perceived as being generally sluggish with little immediate prospect of a wholesale revival. The more sanguine observers feel that some demand upturn may encourage shipowners to expand fleets in the later 1980's, especially as VLCC tonnage will be in need of replacement by then given the virtual cessation of tanker building since the mid-1970s. Already, there are signs that recovery is on the way in Far Eastern shipyards. Hong Kong shipowners have noted a 20 per cent increase in newbuilding ship prices during 1983 as a result of massive speculative orders placed in Japan (the programme for 111 bulkers placed by Sanko Line) and huge multiship orders landed by South Korean shipbuilders from Indian, Iranian and US principals. 1 However, the geographical selectivity of the revival deserves underscoring: recovery may be underway in Far Eastern yards but West European and American yards are deeply embedded in recession. New bookings in these yards have failed to keep pace with ship completions, and as a result, work evaporates as the orderbook backlog is progressively depleted. In Britain, lack of work forced BS to close three of its small-ship yards in early 1984 (Robb-Caledon at Leith, Clelands on the Tyne, and Goole Shipbuilders), while in the US, the American Ship Building Company is closing its large Lorain yard on the Great Lakes. Everywhere in Western Europe, shipbuilding unemployment looms large. The French Normed Group announced in early 1984 that as many as 5,600 workers were to be dismissed from its three yards at La Seyne, La Ciotat and Dunkirk. 2 Since 1982 over half of Belgium's 6,000 shipbuilding workers have been discharged, 3577,000 jobs have been eliminated in West Germany (with the prospect of another 2,000), and Spain intends cutting 10,000 jobs out of its shipbuilding workforce of 39,000. 3 This dichotomy which reduces to a relatively prosperous and expansive shipbuilding industry in the Far East in contrast to a declining, loss-making shipbuilding industry in Western Europe was highlighted in Chapter 1 and was used as the point of departure for the shipbuilding model outlined in Chapter 2.
