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Salles and a former board member of
Deltamarin. “The industry had been affected
by several crises in the 1980s and 1990s. That
was the end of the domination of European
shipbuilding.”
Worldwide, there was 30% overcapacity
in shipbuilding, meaning that a third of all
shipyards in the world could be eliminated.
The European shipyards were waiting to see
which ones would drop first. A price war was
imminent.
“Italy is showing signs of closing down
shipyards this year,” Markku Kanerva said
to the Finnish Tekniikka&Talous magazine in
2002. “It’s simply a question of who loses their
nerve first and starts cutting prices. Japanese
shipyards have already started doing so; a
couple of shipyards have dropped their prices
considerably.”
Cargo ships were facing a similar crisis.
Container ships in particular were
swimming through troubled waters. Freight
levels were so low that it was cheaper for
shipowners to keep their vessels docked.
Kanerva named the German merchant fleet
as a case in point. “A hundred of its container
ships are lying idle as we speak.”
With the European market at a standstill,
Deltamarin decided to turn to the Chinese
market for work. According to Markku
Kanerva, Deltamarin had initial reservations
about the Chinese and Asian markets. “The
European shipyards would have closed their
doors on us if we had taken our cruise ship
knowhow to China.”
Instead, Deltamarin focused on designing
ro-ro vessels and product tankers. The
company opened a representative office in
China, eventually gaining a 70% market share
of ro-ro and ro-pax vessels designed for
European shipowners and built by Chinese
shipyards. European ro-ro and ro-pax vessels
were being built at four shipyards in China.
Of these four shipyards, Deltamarin was
involved with three. These ro-ro vessels
included the Finnmaster class for Finnlines,
as well as designing tankers for the Finnish
energy company Neste and the special ro-ro
carriers Ville de Bordeaux at Jinling shipyard
and City of Hamburg and Ciudad de Cadiz
in Singapore for transportation of Airbus
sections. Because these vessels were steel and
machinery-led projects, not all departments
of Deltamarin were involved. Some of the 350
employees were temporarily laid off.
Still, Deltamarin failed to secure a stronger
foothold in the bulker, tanker and container
carrier market in China. This was extremely
essential as the cruise ship, passenger ferry
and offshore markets were not providing an
adequate volume of work in the early years of