Europe's largest shipbuilding power, Netherlands shipbuilders, visited Korea on May 27. KOTRA invited 10 major shipbuilding companies from the Netherlands and held a "Holland Marine Equipment Trade Meeting" in Busan. They visited a shipyard of Huyndai Heavy Industries in Ulsan in the afternoon on 28th of May.
Netherlands shipbuilding companies construct high-speeding ferries, speed cargo ships, special fishing boats and warships in Europe. And Korea ship export is expected to expand to ship equipment, high value-added materials due to this companies' visiting. Especially, major shipbuilding companies such as Damen Shipyard, Europe's largest shipbuilding company, IHC Merwede where they occupy 50 percent of world market share, and Damen Naval Shipbuilding, specialized in warships attended. The collaboration with Netherlands makes it possible to enter the European marine equipment market size of 26 billion Euros.
So far, buyers were impressed by excellent quality products of Korea such as Marine engines, engine parts, propellers and drive system's main components and the lifeboats, deck equipment, auxiliary equipment, other pipes, cabin parts and many others, compared to China where was reported the quality problems on hull blocks and valves, heat exchangers
An official from KOTRA said "the Netherlands has been operating a long-term plan named 'LeaderSHIP 2015' for development of the shipbuilding industry. Since this plan pursues enhancing the competitiveness of the shipbuilding industry, as part of the plan, the outsourcing for marine equipment is expected to increase. Therefore, Korean export firms need aggressive efforts."
Source: KOTRA
