- Three special ships ordered: two trailing suction hopper dredgers and one side stone dumping vessel

- Focusing on niche markets in shipbuilding such as offshore plants and special ships

STX Shipbuilding & Offshore succeeded in winning special ship orders, speeding up establishing niche markets to overcome a reduction in new ship orders due to financial crisis.

STX Offshore & Shipbuilding (President: Kim Kang-soo, www.stxons.com) announced on October 5 that it won orders for two 11,800 DWT trailing suction hopper dredgers and one 6,500 DWT side stone dumping vessel from two affiliates of Jan De Nul Group (JDN Group), which specializes in dredging and reclamation.
JDN Group, based in Belgium and Luxemburg, is a world-famous marine service provider.

A trailing suction hopper dredger is a special ship for removing mud, sand, gravel and stones from the bottom of the ocean, river, and harbor. The trailing suction hopper dredger STX won orders is a state-of-the-art model equipped with suction pipes for removing materials, a dredge pump for pumping up materials, a hopper for loading materials and a dynamic positioning system. It will measure 119.1m in length, 23m in width and 10.8m in depth.

A side stone dumping vessel is a special ship for pouring rocks into the ocean floor to reclaim the bottom of the ocean. STX plans to build a 6,500 DWT side stone dumping vessel, which will be 115m long, 23m wide, and 7m deep.
The trailing suction hopper dredgers and the side stone dumping vessel will be built in the STX Busan shipyard and delivered in 2011.

In particular, STX received orders for these two types of ships for the first time. STX shipbuilding portfolio showed its ability to build all types of ships in four shipbuilding fields ranging from merchant ships to passenger ships to offshore plants/special ships to defense warships.

In fact, STX has focused on niche markets in offshore plants and special ships as merchant ship markets rapidly cooled off due to the global economic crisis.
In May, STX obtained a vessel order for marine experiments worth 43 billion won from the Agency for Defense Development. STX Europe also received orders for one army transport ship (helicopter carrier) and three ice breaking tugs in April. In this regard, STX is emerging as a real power in special ships/defense ships as well as merchant ships.

Jeong Young-hwan, vice president of the company said, ¡°We will make efforts to bear fruits in global offshore plants order project scheduled in the second quarter of this year by strengthening global production network between Korea-Europe-China.¡±