Page 40: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (April 2013)

40 Maritime Reporter & Engineering News ? APRIL 2013 What we?re Þ nding at the moment is there are very few big value repairs out there; it?s a lot of small stuff. Own- ers simply are not spending more than they have to. Four or Þ ve years ago, we might have seen owners maybe spending $1.5 m, whereas today they are spend-ing maybe $500,000 to do the bare mini-mum.What are some of the ef Þ ciencies you?ve enacted? One of the main things we are beneÞ ting from at the moment is the de-velopment and expansion of the facili-ties. We were very much restricted on where we could put vessels as far as berthing space; but now we?ve increased that by 1,400 m with additional craneage, and we are starting to utilize a lot of the land we have at our disposal. We are relocat- ing areas of the yard to open areas, al-lowing us to free up space and give us more freedom and ß exibility of opera- tions, making us less concentrated, less condensed.That?s looking at facilities. What have you done on the business side? We?ve had to diversify away from commercial ship repair during this period. If we had continued with all of our eggs in one basket, as was the case up to about Þ ve years ago, then I don?t think that the company would have had a fantastic future. Diversifying into related work where we can make use of our re-sources and skills that we?ve got has re-ally helped to sustain the company. We have developed the offshore market. What we are seeing there is continu-ous growth each year, and we?ve seen the competition on the offshore in the last few years. I think the formula that we?ve set for ourselves in the beginning is working well for us now, but it is still a very tight market.We?ve gone into the energy division building power barges. (In December 2012) we Þ nished a 125 MW power barge that we?ve jointly developed with U.K.-based Centrax. We?ve built one on spec and are in the process of building two more on spec. We?re expecting or- ders to come through very soon, and we see this as opening another very good revenue stream.Is the diversiÞ cation centered solely on construction and repair activities? As a result of all of this diver- siÞ cation, we have introduced a consul-tancy division (which as of March 2013 will have its own new building on the shipyard site) mainly to support the ship repair, offshore and barge construction operations. In addition, we are starting to see how we can provide a service to owners particularly to allow them to meet all of the emerging IMO regula- tions. For example, Ballast Water Man- agement Systems, gas emissions, and conversion to LNG as fuel. There are a number of companies that have even approached us about helping them to improve their yards or facili-ties. Of course, we?ll be very selective, but this is how we?re trying to develop the consultancy business. Previously, we had to outsource a lot of our engineering and design work.You?ve had a long career, a broad per- spective. How is the industry most dif-ferent today from when you started? My career has always been in ship repair and it spans 50 years. I started off working in 1962, and it was a completely different industry then. What we?ve seen in all of this time is changes in the means of transportation. In those days, there were no VLCCs, there were no containerships; there were no containers. All freight and cargo was carried on cargo vessels in their holds. There seemed to be many more vessels, and many more shipping companies. Many of these we have seen absorbed into bigger companies or they have sim-ply ceased to exist. Also in those days, particularly in the U.K., there was a thriving shipbuilding industry, as well as a thriving ship repair industry. This all collapsed with competition from the Far East in the 1950s and 60s. 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