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Europe must not let its shipbuilding industry down

Shipping is basically just about transporting cargo or passengers from one port to another. However, in real life it is much more than that. “Navigare necesse est, vivere non est necesse” is perhaps a worn out cliché, but the words of Pompey the Great are as current today as they were more than 2,000 years ago. Without shipping the world stops – “to sail is necessary; to live is not”.

Economic globalisation is today’s guideline in industrial production. In our minds the earth keeps on shrinking, but physically it is still exactly as vast as it was during the age of the Roman Empire.
  More than 70 per cent of the earth’s surface is covered with water, a fact that minimizes the available alternatives for transportation. The ‘infrastructure’ – the sea – is provided by the nature, but we must supply the means of transportation. Without a large fleet of ocean-going vessels we might as well kiss most of the commodities that we take for granted in our daily lives goodbye.

Of all the vessels sailing on the seven seas only a fraction is completed by shipyards in Northern Europe. The large cruise vessels are the most prestigious products of the shipbuilding industry in our region. So far only a couple of shipyards in the whole world are able to build such ships – all of them in Europe. The know-how and the structures needed for building such floating holiday resorts cannot be acquired in a very short time.
  Flexibility is one of the most important qualities of European shipbuilding. In some projects this may be the winning criterion, even overshadowing the price. The owners simply need European shipyards as an alternative to low-cost shipbuilding, which is usually stuck to its standard solutions.
  Today the shipbuilding industry is facing difficult times all over the world. The need for shipments of raw materials and products has decreased rapidly because of the economic recession. The rates have been falling and ships are being laid up. No one is even thinking about ordering new vessels.
  Europe must not let its shipbuilding industry down now. Securing its existence through the crisis is as important for the region itself as it is for the global shipping industry. In a global perspective it is crucial to maintain a sound competition within shipbuilding with a sufficient number of different alternatives.

“The owners need European
shipyard as an alternative
to low-cost shipbuilding,
which is usually stuck
to its standard solutions"

But Europe also needs commercial shipyards that build ordinary but still innovative cargo vessels and other special types of ships.
  The future existence of shipyards building excellent ships in Europe is up to us. Our shipyards will never be able to offer the lowest prices, but they are able to design and build the best ships in the world.
  European shipbuilding is today focusing on many important values such as minimizing a vessel’s impact on the environment and implementing the highest possible safety standards. Such quality leadership costs money and the question is whether we are also willing to pay for that.
  Direct government support to national shipbuilding has seldom proved to be a working solution, neither has partial nor total government ownership of the shipyards. More creativity is needed. The negative impact of a downturn in new orders could for example be neutralised by a generous government support for investments in European-built, environmentally friendlier vessels, which replace old ones.
  Many quality-minded shipowners would certainly be highly interested in applying the latest environmental technologies if it would not be so costly compared with ordinary solutions. Investments in greener and safer ships would indirectly benefit all of us.

This is perhaps a somewhat naive idea of thinking outside the box. Instead of giving away money as subsidies the governments would make investments, and an investment should pay itself back – in this case as a small step towards a better environment.
  The financing of shipping and shipbuilding must continue despite the on-going financial crisis. Even if there is a surplus of tonnage in many sectors now, there are a lot of old vessels still sailing. Now, when all the available capacity is not needed, there could be an opportunity to definitively get rid of de facto substandard ships in European waters by replacing them with new, environmentally friendly ones.
  Today the most incredible ships in the world are built in Europe. Let’s hope that this will be the case also in the future.

Pär-Henrik Sjöström. Editor, Finland.

Latest update 19-12-2008