Seoul: The Korean Register of Shipping's classed fleet has reached 30m gt, and expects this figure to reach 33.5m gt by end 2008 and well over 40m gt by 2010. The surge in fleet size - up almost 4m gt from last year - has been driven largely by 2007's healthy newbuilding market and includes a wide range of vessels including bulk carriers and tankers (to be built according to IACS Common Structural Rules), containerships, VLOCs and PCTCs.
"We've been focusing on international growth and the Chinese market has been a particular target," said KR's chairman and ceo Oh Kong-gyun. "We've expanded our resources in China to provide a wide-range of technical support to the local shipyards and opened two additional Chinese branch offices in Nanjing and Ningbo. As a result, of the 143 new KR-classed vessels being build outside Korea, 69 are to be built in China."
The chairman also spoke of the increasing International demand, "Greek owner, Danaos Shipping Co Ltd, is classing a newbuilding order for three 10,000teu containerships with us and Sinochem Shipping Co Ltd - a subsidiary of the Chinese oil refinery giant - will class four new chemical tankers with us in addition to the vessels already in the KR fleet. And an increased number of Norwegian, Japanese and Turkish owners are also requesting newbuilding classification surveys from us."
KR plans to extend its international network in Mumbai, Durban, New Orleans, Taipei and Tianjin in the near future, which will bring its total number of branch offices to over 50. It also has plans to establish regional head offices in China and Europe later this year. [28/04/08]
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