Pressured by a slump in new shipbuilding orders, the South Korean shipbuilder Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI) informed that it is looking to close another one of its dry docks at the Ulsan shipyard, the Korean newspaper Pulse reported.
The facility in question is the 380-meter-long Dock 5, which has a capacity to roll out 400,000 tons a year. The dock was mostly used to construct oil tankers, the Pulse reported.
In May the company is scheduled to stop operations at its largest shipyard, the Gunsan Dockyard, whose annual capacity exceeds 1.3 million tons. Additionally, the works at HHI’s offshore dock in Ulsan are set to halt in late 2017. With these moves, the company will close four of its eleven facilities during the year, raising concerns regarding job security.
The shipbuilder was cited as saying that, if the industry’s downward path continues in 2017, some 6,000 workers could end up losing their jobs.
The latest dock closure comes on the back of Hyundai Heavy’s decision to shut down the ops at its Dock 4 in June 2016.
Until the end of February, the company received USD 758 million worth of new shipbuilding orders, significantly more than the USD 77 million of orders received by the end of February in 2015.
The company said that its revenues at the end of the month stood at KRW 2.43 billion (USD 2.1 million), 31.8 percent lower than the revenue of KRW 3.5 billion recorded at the end of February 2015.
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