CRM D0006988.

A1/Final
September 2002

A Brief History of Shipbuilding

in Recent Times

Tim Colton • LaVar Huntzinger

4825 Mark Center Drive • Alexandria, Virginia 22311-1850

Approved for distribution: September 2002

Cost and Acquisition Team

Resource Analysis Division

This document represents the best opinion of CNA at the time of issue.
It does not necessarily represent the opinion of the Department of the Navy.

Approved for Public Release; Distribution Unlimited. Specific authority: N00014-00-D-0700.

For copies of this document call: CNA Document Control and Distribution Section at 703-824-2123.

Copyright 0 2002 The CNA Corporation

Contents
The condition of U.S. shipbuilding. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

From World War II to the Suez Crisis (1946–1956) . . . . . . . 5

From closure of the Suez Canal to the OPEC Crisis

(1957–1973) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

From the OPEC Crisis to the end of the Cold War

(1974–1989) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

From the end of the Cold War to the present (1990–2002) . . . 19

Prospects for the future . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

i
The condition of U.S. shipbuilding
U.S. shipbuilding has been examined repeatedly in recent years with
general agreement about the major findings [1] [2]. From the ship-
builders' perspective, the major problem is that too few large ships
are being ordered and built; and from the perspective of buyers, the
major problem is that large U.S. built ships cost too much. There is
no consensus, however, about what can, or should, be done about the
major problems nor about the relative importance of many related
issues. This study traces the effects of important recent events leading
to the current situation.

Several characteristics of ships and shipbuilding give continuing

importance to past events. Because modern ships have an economic
life of about 30 years, some of the factors affecting the current market
are echoes from past events. And other factors that affect the current
market are based on expectations about what is likely to happen in
the next 30 years. Such factors in turn cause echoes because future
events are often based on what happened in the past. Another reason
past events continue to have influence is that large numbers of skilled
workers and costly facilities are required for ship construction. Coor-
dinating efficient use of the facilities and effective use of the work
force is always complicated and challenging; and interruptions are
almost impossible to accommodate because an efficient shipyard and
effective labor force can't be maintained without building ships. Start-
ing new shipbuilding operations, or significantly increasing the scale
of existing operations, requires complicated planning and years of
investment. In addition, prospective changes in shipbuilding often
become political issues. They become political issues because they
influence the economic health of regions and because ships are
important in warfare, both as warfighting platforms and for trans-
porting cargo. These complicating factors make changes controver-
sial so they tend to be contemplated and argued for years and
implemented slowly and partially. This becomes another connection
with the past.

1
 Because the condition of U.S. shipbuilding has roots in history, trac-
ing the recent history helps us explain and understand the current
condition. Our summary covers the last 60 years. We focus on four his-
torical events that had major impact on shipbuilding: World War II,
the Suez Crisis in 1956, the OPEC oil embargo in 1973, and the end
of the Cold War in 1989. Although in some ways the shipbuilding
industry in the United States has become isolated from the world
market, we trace the history of the world shipbuilding industry for
several reasons. One is that tracing developments in world shipbuild-
ing provides a proper context for considering U.S. shipbuilding.
Another reason is that U.S. shipbuilding was once more a part of the
world market than it is now and may need to become so again. We are
interested in both commercial and navy ships. Although commercial
and navy ships are very different and at any point in time it may seem
that navy shipbuilders and merchant shipbuilders are two distinct
groups, most naval shipbuilders have built merchant ships, and many,
if not most merchant shipbuilders have also built naval ships.

The history of the shipbuilding industry in the years since World War
II has been one of boom and bust as shown in figure 1. Most of the
world's merchant ships are now built by Korea and Japan, which
together built about 77 percent of the gross tonnage delivered in
2000. The third-ranked shipbuilding nation in 2000 was China, which
built almost 5 percent of the world output. Several European coun-
tries are small but significant participants in the world commercial
shipbuilding market. Listed in order of total gross tonnage of ship
deliveries in 2000, from largest to smallest, these countries are Ger-
many, Italy, Spain, Denmark, the Netherlands, Finland, France, Nor-
way, the U.K., and Sweden. Together, they produced about 10.5
percent of the gross tonnage of merchant ships delivered in 2000.
U.S. shipbuilders produced less than one-fourth of one percent of the
commercial tonnage delivered in 2000, which is about the same as the
production from Finland [3].

2
Figure 1. World and U.S. merchant ship deliveries

World U.S.
40

35

30

25
Million GT

20

15

10

0
1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000
Year

3
From World War II to the Suez Crisis (1946–
1956)
Ships may never again be as important as they were in World War II.
For the war in Europe, merchant ships performed a critical role by
carrying forces and equipment, and support across the Atlantic to
beleaguered Britain. The war in the Pacific was even more naval in
character. Both the United States and Japan needed to move long dis-
tances across the ocean. Because ship-borne support was crucial for
the Allies in Europe, Germany focused on interdicting allied ship-
ping and devoted great effort to building warships for the battle of
the Atlantic. Submarines were particularly effective and became their
principal weapon. The Allies needed to replace losses of merchant
ships and build warships to combat the U-boat threat. Before the war,
the international maritime industry was dominated by the four
nations that became the war’s main protagonists; and because ships
were so important, considerable effort and resources were devoted to
designing and building ships during the war. Many important innova-
tions and advances in shipbuilding were discovered and developed
during that time.

After the war, the triumphant United States and UK were left with
large fleets, both navy and commercial, and very large shipbuilding
industries. The United States had 8 naval shipyards and at least 64 pri-
vate-sector shipyards that were actively building large naval or mer-
chant ships. Of the 64 private-sector yards, 24 had been major
shipbuilders before the war, 20 had been established or expanded by
the Navy for the naval shipbuilding program, and 20 had been estab-
lished or expanded by the U.S. Maritime Commission for the mer-
chant shipbuilding program [4]. The geographic concentration of
the large British shipyards in the extreme north of England and in
Scotland had protected their shipbuilding industry from the worst of
the bombing, and relatively little reconstruction was required.

5
 However, most of the U.S. and U.K. shipyards were modeled on the
labor-intensive practices of the 1920s and 1930s.

When the war ended, the United States had many more ships than it
needed and a shipbuilding industry sized to build at wartime rates.
The U.S. government sold large numbers of surplus Liberty and Vic-
tory ships to other nations at relatively low prices. But such ships were
not appropriate for some uses so there was a large and growing
demand for new ships, particularly tankers, as world trade expanded
and merchant fleets were re-established. Most of the demand for new
ships was in Europe. British shipbuilders had the advantage of loca-
tion as well as available functioning shipyards. The early years of the
period, from 1946 to 1956, were years of growth and prosperity for
British shipbuilders who thrived on the reconstruction of the world’s
merchant fleets with little competition from other regions. In the
immediate post-war years, British shipyards produced almost half of
all the new merchant tonnage built worldwide.

In continental Europe and in Japan, shipyards had been important

targets for allied bombing and when the war ended, the shipbuilding
industries lay in ruins. Most of the ships belonging to European
nations and Japan had also been destroyed. By the 1950s, three signif-
icant trends were beginning to appear, all of which were at first
ignored by the established shipyards, to their subsequent great cost:

• First, the countries whose shipyards had been badly damaged

by the war—principally Japan, Germany, France, and Italy—
were able to build new facilities or rebuild old facilities that
were much more efficient than those they had lost. When these
revitalized shipyards started to come on stream, the older ship-
yards, particularly those in Britain, were suddenly at a compet-
itive disadvantage, not only in terms of cost but also of delivery.

• Second, a number of European nations that had not been

major shipbuilders in the past began to invest in the facilities
needed to share in the prosperity. These countries included the
four Scandinavian countries—Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and
Finland—as well as three less developed Mediterranean coun-
tries—Spain, Yugoslavia, and Greece. As a result, the

6
 geographic distribution of the world market was significantly
different by the end of the period and was changing yearly.

• Third, and by far the most significant, the reconstruction of the

Japanese economy after World War II led directly to the emer-
gence of the Japanese shipbuilding industry as a world power.
This should have been no surprise to the western world, since
the Japanese industry had grown considerably during the war
and had demonstrated its potential by constructing many types
of ships in a wide range of sizes for the Imperial Japanese Navy.

An American named D.K. Ludwig provided the spark for the post-war
recovery in Japanese shipbuilding. His shipping company, National
Bulk Carriers, (NBC), leased the shipyard in Kure that had built the
great Japanese battleships and started the construction of tankers
that were much larger than the current world standard. At that time,
Japan was almost the only country using large tankers because it
imported nearly all of its oil and its tankers were not constrained in
size by the limitations of the Suez Canal [5]. The NBC shipyard at
Kure was the first shipyard to adapt the industrial engineering princi-
ples developed in the U.S. wartime economy. Its General Manager,
Elmer Hann, had spent the war managing one of the most successful
of Henry Kaiser’s emergency shipyards. The large Japanese trading
companies immediately saw the potential for large-scale assembly-line
construction of ships, using standard designs and with individual
shipyards specializing in only one or two designs. These concepts
were quickly copied and developed, and by 1956, the Japanese indus-
try overtook Britain to become the leading shipbuilding nation in
terms of output.

During the post-war years, the Soviet-bloc countries also rebuilt their
shipbuilding capacity, primarily in Poland and East Germany for com-
mercial ships, and in the Soviet Union itself for naval vessels. To a
great extent, Soviet-bloc shipbuilders built only for Soviet-bloc ship-
ping companies and presented no threat to the western world
because they were not required to be cost-competitive and their ships
were of poor quality and not very reliable.

Elsewhere, the only significant shipbuilding activity was in Brazil,

where in the 1950s, the Brazilian government encouraged existing

7
 small shipbuilders to increase their capabilities and capacity. As a
result, Brazil could be counted among the world’s shipbuilding
nations, although its markets were purely domestic.

In the United States, the trend was moving in a direction opposite to

that of the rest of the world. After the war, the Navy shipyards imme-
diately scaled back their operations but continued to be the primary
source of Navy shipbuilding. No Navy shipyards were closed. All but
two of the emergency yards that had been built specifically for the war
effort were closed and disposed of, although several later re-emerged
as ship repair facilities. The remaining private-sector shipyards also
scaled back their operations, but unlike the Navy shipyards, they
immediately began to suffer from lack of work. During this interval,
several major shipyards that had been in operation prior to World
War II closed, and several more ceased to be active shipbuilders and
turned to ship repair. The only bright spot during this period was the
worldwide increase in demand for petroleum, which led to the con-
struction of 135 large tankers, all built by the old established yards at
Bethlehem Sparrows Point (MD), Bethlehem Quincy (MA), Sun
(PA), and Newport News (VA) [6].

By the end of 1950, the U.S. shipbuilding industry had almost no

work and made an unsuccessful appeal to the Government to fund
sufficient new shipbuilding to keep a minimum level of mobilization
capability employed. The Korean War stimulated some activity, mostly
in reactivation of the Reserve Fleet and in repair work, but no new
ship construction was required. There were still many merchant ships
in the Reserve Fleet, and the Navy had more than 1,000 ships. The
“Mariner” program was funded in 1951, under which the U.S. Mari-
time Administration (MARAD) contracted with each of seven ship-
builders to build five cargo ships of a new and relatively adventurous
design. MARAD sold 30 of these 35 ships to private-sector ship oper-
ators and the remaining 5 were assigned to the Navy. The Mariner
program brought some life to the U.S. shipbuilding industry for a few
years, but the period was one of overall decline and the industry con-
tinued to contract.

Just as the coming of peace brought the reconstruction of the world’s

merchant fleets, it also brought an end to naval shipbuilding. The

8
world’s navies were scaled back everywhere, and naval shipbuilding
almost came to a standstill.

The structure of the world fleet began to change during this period.
Most cargo ships were still either war-built break-bulk ships or tank-
ers, but the proportion of tankers was increasing and tankers were
getting bigger. The average size of tankers was about 12,000 dead-
weight tons (DWT) at the end of the war and about 16,000 DWT in
1956. In 1956, the largest tanker that could transit the Suez Canal
(“Suezmax”) was about 32,000 DWT, and the largest tanker in exist-
ence, built by National Bulk Carriers at Kure, was about 85,000 DWT.

9
From closure of the Suez Canal to the OPEC
Crisis (1957–1973)
The closure of the Suez Canal in 1956 had a stunning effect on the
tanker market. Suddenly, the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf to West-
ern Europe and the United States had to be re-routed around the
Cape of Good Hope, leading to an immediate shortage of oil and an
overnight increase in the demand for tankers. Because tankers had to
travel much longer distances, economies of scale associated with
operating larger ships were magnified, and, at the same time, the size
constraint imposed by the Suez Canal disappeared. The opportunity
was not ignored. Not only did the tanker fleet grow by almost
400 percent during this period, but the average size of a tanker grew
from 16,000 to 58,000 DWT. The largest tanker in the fleet grew from
85,000 to 550,000 DWT, the point where it remains today. The same
economic considerations that had led to the success of large tankers
and the demonstrated increase in profits from those tankers encour-
aged the use of much larger ships for dry bulk and other trades. Ship-
yards that could build these huge ships became the leaders in the
industry.

The period from 1957 to 1973 was one of great change for shipbuild-
ers. The structure of the industry changed dramatically, as the
demand for ships shifted rapidly from general cargo ships to larger
tankers and as more and more low-cost producers emerged in Japan
and the less developed countries. Japan had edged Britain out of its
position as the leading shipbuilding nation by 1956, but European
shipbuilding as a whole was at that time still a major force. By 1973,
however, the Japanese shipbuilding industry had displaced all West-
ern European countries combined. The Europeans had not yet
worked out where their shipbuilding future, if any, would lie and were
still trying, unsuccessfully, to compete in the markets for large tankers
and dry bulk carriers. Many British shipyards belatedly invested in
facilities for building large tankers, but most went only half-way or

11
 waited too long, constrained by their location, their bankers, and/or
their imaginations. The successful European shipbuilders during this
period were those with all-new rather than modernized facilities.
These firms included Kockums, Eriksbergs, Gotaverken, and Ore-
sunds in Sweden; Odense in Denmark; Wartsila in Finland; La Ciotat
in France; and Astilleros de Cadiz in Spain The old-line firms became
even less able to compete.

The period from 1957 to 1973 was one of boom in Japan, where the
shipbuilding industry grew significantly, increasing its output by a
factor of more than ten—from about 5 million GT in 1957 to about
60 million GT in 1973. Japanese shipyards refined their production
techniques during this period to the point that their productivity was
more than double that of European and American yards, and their
wages remained low. Sales managers offered only standard designs
and fixed deliveries. The demand for ships, especially for large tank-
ers, was so strong that the shipyards were making substantial profits,
and ship owners were making money buying and selling contracts for
new ships even before the keels had been laid. All this came to a halt
in 1973, but the collapse in the industry’s order books was not to
follow for a few years because of the time needed to finish the ships
under contract.

Because the large tanker is one of the simplest and most labor-inten-
sive types of merchant ship to build, its dominance of new ship con-
struction contracts between 1957 and 1973 fueled the development
of shipbuilding in less developed countries. This trend was spurred by
the fact that shipbuilding is a technology that is relatively easy to
transfer and has the significant attractions of providing many jobs
and generating hard currency. Along with Spain and Yugoslavia in
Western Europe, Poland in Eastern Europe, and Taiwan in the Far
East, the shipbuilding industry in Brazil continued to grow, particu-
larly with investment from Japan’s IHI and Holland’s Verolme. Else-
where, the Indian government invested in new facilities during this
period, and Portugal, Bahrain, the U.A.E., and Singapore built large
ship repair yards to cater to the new fleets of large tankers. Both Brazil
and India subsidized their shipyards heavily, and their output was
largely directed to building up their national-flag fleets.

12
At the beginning of this period, U.S. shipbuilding was still in the dol-
drums. Considerable relief was provided, however, when the Navy
finally recognized that private-sector shipbuilders were 30 percent to
40 percent more efficient than government shipyards. The Navy
closed its three shipyards in Boston, Brooklyn and San Francisco and
ended all new ship construction work in Navy shipyards. The Navy
then started a wholesale modernization of the fleet, and planned to
build 250 new ships over the 5-year period between 1963 and 1967.
This work gradually became more and more concentrated in a hand-
ful of private-sector shipyards [7].

The election of President Nixon in 1968 ushered in an era of major

change for the commercial side of the U.S. industry. One of his first
actions was to appoint a President’s Commission on American Ship-
building to study the industry and to make recommendations for
change, as a result of which the Nixon Administration introduced a
number of amendments to the Merchant Marine Act of 1936, the
most significant of which extended the Act’s provisions to include not
only general cargo and passenger vessels but also tankers and dry
bulk carriers. As a result, by the end of the period, the industry was as
healthy as it had been at any time since the war. No one expressed res-
ervations about the re-emergence of the former Brooklyn naval ship-
yard as a privately operated facility for the construction of large
tankers or about the substantial sums being invested by existing ship-
builders in facilities for the construction of large tankers and lique-
fied natural gas carriers. Shipyards had so much commercial work
that for several years at the end of this period, the Navy could not find
enough interested shipbuilders to build all the ships for which funds
had been appropriated [7].

A further feature of this period was the emergence of a wholly new

sector of the industry, the construction of vessels for offshore explo-
ration for oil and gas. This technology had its origin in Texas: The
first shipyards to engage in this business were all located in Texas,
and, at the height of the market, 80 percent of the world’s drill rigs
were built in Texas [6]. The early drilling rigs were barges, many of
them conversions, and the early jack-ups were essentially barge hulls
with legs. In the 1950s, wartime LSTs were converted to drilling ten-
ders, and the first drill ships were also conversions. As a result, the

13
 offshore sector of the shipbuilding industry was distinct from the tra-
ditional shipbuilders. The offshore yards were less capitalized and,
although naval architects designed the rigs, the rig builders came
from the oil industry rather than from shipbuilding. In the early
1960s, the industry had progressed to the point that wholly new and
more complex designs of rigs were being built—jack-ups, semi-sub-
mersibles, and drill ships—with ever more impressive performance
characteristics. In addition, other specialized offshore markets devel-
oped, such as heavy derrick barges and offshore service vessels. By the
end of the period, at least six shipyards in Texas were wholly devoted
to the construction of offshore drilling rigs.

Navy fleets from the World War II era were becoming obsolete during
this period, and naval forces began to be extensively renewed.
Because navy shipbuilding is a strategic capability, every major nation
builds its own navy ships. Therefore, navy shipbuilding output was
dominated by the four nations with important navies: the United
States, the U.S.S.R., Britain, and France.

14
From the OPEC Crisis to the end of the Cold
War (1974–1989)
Eighteen years after the closure of the Suez Canal had had such an
impact on the industry, the OPEC oil embargo (announced October
25, 1973) and the resulting increase in the price of oil had a similarly
dramatic effect, only in the opposite direction. Suddenly, the demand
for oil collapsed and the need for tankers evaporated. The collapse in
demand was so sudden and so severe that many new ships that were
already under construction went straight from the shipbuilder into
long-term lay-up in the fjords of Norway or the harbors of Greece and
Southeast Asia, and a few went to the “breakers” without ever carrying
a cargo.

With the bankruptcy of many ship owners and shipbuilders (and of

some shipping banks as well), it soon became apparent that the only
way European shipbuilders could stay in business and compete with
Japan would be with the aid of government subsidies. Because ship-
building is a large and politically sensitive industry, government inter-
vention was employed almost everywhere. Some countries tried
nationalization, while others opted for forced rationalization (reorga-
nizations and mergers to eliminate duplication and over capacity),
and the remainder offered financial supports on a case-by-case basis.
After a few years, it was apparent that there was little hope of recovery,
and ship production capacity began to be cut back everywhere. By
1989, the shipbuilding activity in Western Europe had sunk to its
lowest level of the century. Every shipbuilding nation had been forced
to support its shipyards financially, at great expense compared to the
number of jobs maintained. Only the lowest-cost European produc-
ers—Yugoslavia and Spain—were able to hold any significant market
share. Several countries abandoned the struggle altogether, most
notably Sweden, which had only entered the industry in the post-war
years and had invested heavily enough in facilities to achieve third
place in the world rankings. Other countries tried different

15
 approaches: Those that had tried rationalization first then tried
nationalization, and vice versa. The European industry contracted to
a few remaining shipyards that specialized in the more complex and
technically sophisticated ship types such as warships and passenger
liners, for which the price disadvantage with Japan and Korea was less
significant. The newly developed shipbuilding industries of Brazil
and India suffered in the collapse of demand and were only main-
tained, with government support, at low levels of production.

An interesting example is the country that had once dominated world

shipbuilding. Britain initially tried forced rationalization, but the
shipyards working in groups were no more competitive than before.
It then tried nationalization, which didn’t make them more competi-
tive and was a bureaucratic nightmare with huge losses. Britain then
tried privatization with targeted financial assistance; this did not work
because the new companies were undercapitalized and the supports
were inadequate. Finally, it cut away all the supports, as Norway and
Sweden had done 15 years earlier, and the British shipbuilding indus-
try withered to almost nothing.

The collapse in the demand for ships also affected the Japanese ship-
building industry. By 1980, Japanese shipbuilding was cut back 35 per-
cent, and the industry was radically reorganized into four groups,
each containing a balanced mixture of yards, large and small, high-
tech and low. Many of the relatively new tanker-building yards were
closed permanently, and others converted to offshore fabrication or
repair work. Further reductions in capacity followed, and the govern-
ment began to tightly control the annual output of individual Japa-
nese shipbuilders [8]. By 1989, the Japanese shipbuilding industry
still dominated the world shipbuilding business, but the pie of which
it had the largest slice was very much smaller than it had been in the
1970s.

South Korea entered the shipbuilding market during this period of

collapsing demand, and its entry proved to be of enormous signifi-
cance. The giant Hyundai group opened a state-of-the-art shipyard,
developed with technical assistance from Britain, in Ulsan in 1973.
Daewoo opened its shipyard operations in Okpo in 1978 and Sam-
sung in Koje in 1979. Each of these facilities was designed to build the

16
largest sizes of tankers and was prepared for considerable expansion.
With labor costs that were about one-fourth those of the Japanese, the
Koreans were competitive with the Japanese even when they were less
efficient. Korean shipbuilders offered to build at low prices and were
soon taking an increasingly large share of the market. As the Koreans
built more and more ships, their shipbuilding technology made
remarkably rapid progress [9]. By 1989, three more Korean shipyards
were in operation: one developed by Halla in Samho, another by
Korea Shipbuilding in Pusan, and the third by Hyundai which con-
verted its repair yard in Ulsan to new ship construction. By 1989,
Korea’s market share had grown to 24 percent as Japan’s had
declined to 38 percent. However, the Korean shipbuilding industry
was not without troubles. Labor unrest made it apparent that Korean
shipyard wages would have to be increased considerably in the years
to come and that, while the Korean shipbuilders were building many
ships, they were also getting into serious financial trouble.

Soviet-bloc shipyards were also in a growth mode during this period

because the Soviet leaders had decided that a Soviet merchant
marine trading worldwide would not only reduce the costs of imports
but could also generate significant amounts of hard currency. By the
end of the period the Soviet bloc’s merchant marine had been over-
built and it was apparent that there would be surplus shipbuilding
capacity in this region.

Another significant development during the period was the emer-

gence of the People’s Republic of China as a shipbuilding nation.
China had always had shipyards, but, like the U.S.S.R., it had concen-
trated on internal markets because it had never had an international
merchant fleet. During this period, the Chinese government created
the China Ocean Shipping Corporation (COSCO) to carry its
increasing foreign trade, and the China State Shipbuilding Corpora-
tion (CSSC) to manage the activities of its shipyards and to develop
an export shipbuilding business.

During this same period, Singapore emerged as another new player

in the shipbuilding industry. At the beginning of the period, U.S.
builders of offshore drilling rigs looked for lower-cost overseas facili-
ties to help them meet the strong demand for new rigs and found

17
 them in newly independent Singapore. By the end of the period, Sin-
gapore owned all of these facilities.

During this period, U.S. shipbuilding went from boom to bust. In the
late 1970s, the industry was busier than it had been at any time since
World War II, with 22 large shipyards building large numbers of cargo
ships of all types for U.S.-flag foreign-trade operators, tankers, and
containerships for Jones Act trade, drill rigs and supply boats for the
offshore industry, and barges for the inland waterways. All this came
to a halt in the early 1980s as a result of four almost simultaneous
developments:

• One of President Reagan’s first actions after he took office in

January 1981 was to terminate all funding for Titles V, VI, and
XI of the Merchant Marine Act. Title V provided subsidies for
the construction of foreign-trade ships and Title VI for their
operation, while Title XI allowed U.S. Government guarantees
for the financing of U.S.-flag ships built in U.S. shipyards.

• The boom in the offshore oil and gas industry came to an end,
drying up demand for new drill rigs and supply boats.

• Overbuilding of the inland fleet created by easily available

financing caused defaults by several operators and brought an
abrupt end to this market sector.

• Construction of the Alaskan-trade tanker fleet was completed,

resulting in a collapse in demand for Jones Act shipbuilding.

The shipbuilding industry in the United States collapsed and, in the

5 years that followed, employment fell by a third, and the number of
active shipyards was reduced by 40 percent. The volume of naval ship-
building increased significantly during the same period as the
Reagan Administration built up the nation’s armed forces and set a
goal of a 600-ship Navy. However, with no commercial work to fall
back on, the competition for naval shipbuilding contracts was so des-
perate that it effectively drove at least three major long-established
shipbuilders—General Dynamics (Quincy MA), Sun Shipbuilding
(Chester PA), and Bethlehem Steel (Sparrows Point MD)—out of the
business, leaving the work concentrated in only six shipyards, none of
which were making any money from building merchant ships.

18
From the end of the Cold War to the present
(1990–2002)
The downward trend in the international shipbuilding market expe-
rienced in the late 1970s and early 1980s hit bottom in 1987, almost
exactly 30 years after the Suez Crisis touched off the previous upturn
in the cycle. The level of shipbuilding orders turned upward in 1988
and that of deliveries in 1990. The primary reason for this change was
the need to begin replacing the large tankers built in the late 1960s
and the early 1970s, many of which had been built and/or main-
tained to standards that now made it relatively expensive for them to
pass the particularly rigorous inspection associated with their fourth
special survey, due at age 20.

Shipbuilders were optimistic that this requirement would lead to a

new era of prosperity, especially when coupled with two other impor-
tant factors:

• First, it was expected that new international and national legis-

lation and regulation, driven largely by the Exxon Valdez oil spill
in 1989, would hasten the replacement of tankers in particular
and possibly many types of older ships as well.

• Second, it was hoped that the industry’s considerable reduc-

tions in capacity over the preceding decade would so reduce
the supply side of the supply/demand equation as to almost
guarantee a seller's market in the decade ahead.

The anticipated increase in shipbuilding activity did, in fact, happen,

although it did not come as quickly as was expected, and many expert
projections had to be revised in later years, with the projections of
demand shifting to later years each time. The uncertainty created by
the 1990 Gulf War was the principal reason for the delay. In fact, it was
not until 1993 that the recovery actually became apparent. In
addition, expectations that capacity would be held constant (thus

19
 forcing prices upward) have faded in the face of four opposing
trends:

• The major Korean yards, seeing an opportunity, ignored pleas

for restraint and added considerable new capacity.

• The Chinese shipbuilding industry similarly ignored pleas for

restraint and continued to develop new capacity.

• The decline in demand for naval shipbuilding that resulted

from the end of the Cold War allowed substantial naval ship-
building capacity to be made available for commercial work, in
the United States—notably at Kvaerner Philadelphia—and in
the former Soviet Union—both in the St. Petersburg region
and on the Black Sea.

• The privatization and modernization of obsolete and ineffi-

cient commercial shipbuilding facilities in the countries of the
former Soviet Bloc—notably in Poland and East Germany—
also effectively added new capacity.

By the turn of the century, worldwide production was increasing and

was expected to continue in that direction for at least the next several
years. The Japanese and Korean shipyards filled most of the growth
in demand. The Korean industry had increased its share of the
market to about 35 percent, finally overtaking the Japanese industry,
which was barely holding its own at about 33 percent and losing
money. The Western European market share was continuing to
decline, despite their concentration on niche markets and continued
use of subsidies. Rapid improvements in technology and productivity
gains made by the Koreans were enabling them to deliver increasingly
complex ships at lower prices than European shipbuilders. This was
undermining the European philosophy of concentrating on niche
markets. So while Western European shipyards still dominated the
high-value markets for such ship types as cruise ships, large ferries,
chemical carriers, roll-on/roll-off ships, and refrigerated-cargo ships
their dominance was eroding.

Another feature of this period was the development of new shipbuild-

ing capacity in Central and Eastern Europe:

20
 • In the former East Germany, shipyards were acquired by West-
ern European shipbuilders and extensively modernized and
reorganized, effectively adding new capacity to the world scene
at the taxpayers’ expense.

• In Poland, although several major shipyards closed, others

recovered through their own efforts and, like the East German
shipyards, effectively became new capacity.

• Navy shipyards on the Baltic and the Black Sea regions of the
former Soviet Union began pursuing fabrication work from the
West, effectively adding still more capacity to the world scene.

• Finally, the Croatian shipbuilding industry, which had been a

major player before the disintegration of Yugoslavia, was priva-
tized and, with private-sector help from Western Europe, began
to recover.

Some form of government support for shipyards has become

accepted as “normal” throughout most of the world. As a result, ship-
builders have shifted some of their focus from competition with other
shipbuilders to political efforts to increase government support. The
United States instigated multilateral negotiations toward an agree-
ment with other shipbuilding nations that was to eliminate all subsi-
dies so that shipyards could compete on a “level playing field.” The
negotiations were conducted in 1984 by a working group of the Orga-
nization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) work-
ing group that included Korea. Although U.S. and European
shipbuilders initially expressed support for the proposition, in princi-
ple, they became concerned that their governments had agreed too
hastily and that they could not survive competition with the Far East
shipbuilding industries without subsidies. The agreement was finally
ratified by every signatory nation except the United States, where
Congress called for a modified version with more protection for U.S.
shipyards. As a result, the agreement was not implemented, and many
European nations subsequently increased the level of subsidies made
available to their shipbuilders.

In the United States during this period, the shipbuilding industry suc-
ceeded in recovering from the disastrous Reagan years. Post-Cold
War reductions in defense budgets and in the size of the U.S. Navy

21
 made concerns about maintaining shipbuilding infrastructure
increasingly important and maintaining meaningful competition
more difficult. Through mergers and buy-outs, all the major ship-
yards came to be owned by one of two major defense corporations,
and the Navy’s major programs were structured to effectively elimi-
nate all but a pretense of competition. Although U.S. builders of
large ships are effectively priced out of the world market for mer-
chant ships, the “Big Six” shipbuilders are highly profitable, with sub-
stantial backlogs extending several years into the new century.

22
Prospects for the future
The U.S. shipbuilder has little hope of regaining a foothold in build-
ing commercial ships for the worldwide market. Although most
observers expect increasing demand for new ships, worldwide, for at
least the next several years, worldwide shipbuilding capacity is also
increasing. The OECD predicts that by 2005, shipyards, worldwide,
will have the capacity to build 40 percent more ships than will be
ordered. Given these circumstances, it is not surprising that the
world’s major shipbuilders are not making a profit. Kvaerner, once
the world’s third largest shipbuilder, decided a few years ago to exit
the market. However, that hasn’t helped with the problem of over
capacity because its policy was to continue operating its shipyards
until buyers were found. No buyers have been found for their three
largest yards, and Kvaerner (now Aker Kvaerner) has opted to con-
tinue to operate them, albeit unprofitably. Japan and Korea are
reported to be nervously eyeing China and are engaged in a round of
consolidation designed to make them more competitive.

Figure 2 shows labor cost rates (wages plus benefits) for several major
shipbuilding nations converted to dollars based on U.S. Bureau of
Labor Statistics data for several recent years. Hourly wage rates for
U.S. shipbuilding are not particularly high. In fact, labor cost rates for
shipbuilding in several countries are as high as U.S. rates; and in
Japan and Germany, which both have relatively strong shipbuilding
industries, the rates in recent years have been higher than U.S. rates.
Japan was the leading shipbuilder during much of the period covered
by the chart. However, the most recently reported labor rates for
Korea, which has become the world’s leading shipbuilder, were sub-
stantially lower, partly as a result of the decline of the won.

23
 Figure 2. Relative shipbuilding labor rates

Japan Korea Germany France Italy US

40

Hourly Wage + Benefits ($)

35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
1975 1977 1979 1981 1983 1985 1987 1989 1991 1993 1995 1997
Year

U.S. shipbuilders use more hours, many more hours, than the better
foreign shipbuilders. Several studies, over several years, have
reported lower productivity for U.S. shipbuilding. Figure 3 displays
relative productivity measures for large shipyards reported by First
Marine International (FMI) in the Benchmarking study sponsored by
the National Shipbuilding Research Program Executive Control
board. A range of values is given for U.S. shipbuilders. The report
shows that a U.S. shipbuilder in the middle of the range uses about
twice as many hours as builders in Europe. The productivity reported
for Korea is similar to that reported for Europe. The report shows
that a U.S. shipbuilder in the middle of the range reported for the
United States uses over four times as many hours as builders in Japan.
The situation isn’t much better if we compare the best-reported U.S.
productivity rates. The report also shows that while productivity in
U.S. shipbuilding has been improving in recent years, productivity in
the leading shipbuilding nations has been improving at a faster rate.
As a result, not only is the United States not catching up, it is actually
falling further behind. The labor cost for building U.S. ships is higher
because we use lots more labor.

24
Figure 3. Relative productivity rates

US low US high EC
K J
100
90

Man-hours per CGTmmm

80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000

Year

The big differences in the numbers of ships being built in Korea and
Japan, where a shipyard builds about 50 commercial ships a year, and
the numbers being built in the United States, where a shipyard builds
one or two commercial ships a year, have important consequences.
Most changes that are proposed to increase productivity require
some expenditure to undertake and so will be undertaken only if the
expected payback is greater than the expected expense. Many
changes that would have sufficient payback over a series of many ships
will not have sufficient payback for one or two ships and so should not
be undertaken by a properly managed U.S. shipbuilder. Also, fixed
cost associated with maintaining facilities and the firm are spread
over many ships instead of only a few. Learning effects can be impor-
tant. One U.S. shipyard reported that building the first vessel of a type
requires about three times as many labor hours as the final three (of
30 vessels), about a 67-percent reduction. The biggest gains due to
learning usually come at the start of a series, but the numbers of com-
mercial ships now being built in the United States are so small that
there is little opportunity to learn, and because builders can’t expect
to build a series, we are forced to wonder whether there are normal
learning effects. In recent years, the large yards have sometimes

25
 demonstrated reverse learning, with consecutive ships in a long series
actually increasing in cost. Although learning-curve effects apply to
building the same thing over and over, there will also be “learning
transfer” from building something that is similar to things previously
built. When the Korean shipyard starts to build a new type of ship, it
will probably be similar to other ships they have recently built, and
they will be able to transfer some learning to this new type of ship.
There is little chance that a U.S. yard will have recently built any ships
that are similar to a new type being considered.

Being large also provides important advantages in dealing with sup-

pliers. For example, the largest Korean shipbuilder, Hyundai Heavy
Industries (HHI), operates 9 large building docks and builds 70 to
80 large commercial ships a year yielding annual revenue of about
$6 billion. It has firm contracts for about 200 ships representing close
to 3 years of work. Each year, HHI buys about $4 billion worth of
goods from suppliers. This level of purchasing activity gives leverage
over suppliers because it means their suppliers are also booked for
about 3 years ahead. HHI and their suppliers can plan ahead and
optimize manufacturing operations to achieve unusually low costs.
The downside of the suppliers’ good fortune is that much of the sav-
ings will have to be passed to the shipbuilder.

Comparing the Korean and Japanese shipbuilding operations to

those of the United States (and European countries) is, in some
respects, like comparing a builder of tract homes to a builder of
custom homes. The custom homebuilder can usefully adopt some of
the techniques for increasing productivity that are employed by
builders of tract homes, but not all of them. Being organized like the
custom builder provides certain advantages for building unusual or
one-of-a-kind homes. So both types of builders, with their different
organizations and cost structures, can co-exist in the housing market.
The relative sizes of the two sectors of the market will depend on both
demand and cost factors.

With the exception of U.S. companies, shipbuilders in recent years

have shown very little profit. Table 1 compares profits for large com-
panies that build large ships. From available information, we
extracted that which was most closely related to shipbuilding.

26
 Ownership of some of the shipbuilding operations changed during
the time interval so we have adjusted to represent net sales and oper-
ating margin in each year as if they were organized like they are now.
Net sales for U.S. firms are in U.S. dollars, for European firms in
Euro, and for Japanese firms in Yen. We don’t list similar information
for Korean shipbuilding companies because reliable information is
not available. In recent years, the large Korean shipbuilding compa-
nies seemed to have incurred astonishing losses and accumulated
extraordinary levels of debt that resulted in bailouts by the Korean
government. Then, in turn, the International Monetary Fund and the
international banking industry rescued the Korean government and
banking industry.

Table 1. Shipbuilder profits in recent years

Net sales and percent operating margin
Groups of firms/years 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000
a
U.S. shipbuilding Units
Nets Sales (in millions of $) 5,781 5,527 5,692 5,663 6,355
Percent operating margin 8.5% 6.8% 10.4% 11.3% 11.2%
b
European shipbuilding units
Net sales (in millions of $) 4,426 4,634 5,275 5,890 5,909
Percent operating margin 7.2% 5.6% 1.5% 0.3% 0.0%
Japanese shipbuilding unitsc
Net sales (in millions of $) 1,799,605 2,029,691 1,973,840 1,990,927 1,419,688
Percent operating margin 2.7% 3.7% 1.6% 1.3% 0.5%

Financial results based on available data for the shipbuilding units of the major shipbuilding Corporations
a. For what are now the shipbuilding units of General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman.
b. For what are now the shipbuilding units of Alstom, Fincantieri, Kvaerner, & A.P. Moller not IZAR.
c. For what are now the shipbuilding units of Hitachi, IHI, Kawasaki, Mitsubishi, Mitsui, NKK, and Sumitomo.

There are some important things to learn from this brief history. First,
we see that the current situation is not a new problem. It developed
over many decades, and U.S. shipbuilders have not been competitive
with the world-class builders of commercial ships for many years. It is
also important to realize that the shipbuilding industries in many
European nations have experienced and now face problems very

27
 much like those facing the United States. We don’t need to try the
same things they have already tried without success. One basis for
expecting the U.S. commercial shipbuilding industry to continue is
the size of the Jones Act market. The “Jones Act market” refers to the
market created by laws that require passengers and cargo being car-
ried between U.S. ports to be carried on U.S. built ships. Our geogra-
phy is such that some ships will almost certainly be used for transport
between U.S. ports, so while current laws remain in effect, there will
continue to be a market for some large U.S. built merchant ships. Per-
haps U.S. shipbuilders should forget about trying to be internation-
ally competitive and concentrate on serving the domestic markets as
efficiently as possible so that we don't lose those as well.

28
References
[1] National Security Assessment of the U.S. Shipbuilding and Repair
Industry, U.S. Department of Commerce, May 2001

[2] Benchmarking of U.S. Shipyards: Industry Report, National Ship-

building Research Program, Advanced Shipbuilding Enterprise

[3] Lloyd’s Register. Data for self-propelled commerial ships over

100 gross tonnage

[4] Professor F.G. Fasset, Jr., editor. The Shipbuilding Business in the
United States of America, The Society of Naval Architects and
Marine Engineers, New York NY, 1948

[5] Dr. Hisashi Shinto. The Progress of Production Techniques in Japa-

nese Shipbuilding, University of Michigan, 1980

[6] Harry Benford, editor. A Half Century of Maritime Technology

1943-1993, The Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engi-
neers, New York NY, 1993

[7] Rear Admiral Randolph W. King, USN (Ret’d.), editor, Naval

Engineering and American Sea Power, The Nautical & Aviation
Publishing Company of America, Inc., Baltimore MD, 1989

[8] Japan Ship Centre, Chronology of Japanese Shipbuilding, Tokyo,

2000

[9] Lloyd’s Register of Shipping, Maritime Guide, London, annu-

ally

29
CRM D0006988.A1/Final