HD Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI) will double its drydock capacity as part of plans to grow its Naval and Special Ships business, ADM can reveal.
HD HHI’s Naval and Special Ships business currently operates two drydocks out of the 10 available across the HD HHI shipyard in Ulsan, South Korea – the largest shipyard in the world.
Currently those drydocks allow the company to build two naval surface ships concurrently for an output of four ships per year, as each ship’s drydock cycle (keel laying to launch) lasts six months at average – as ADM reported in June.
The company can also build two submarines simultaneously alongside the four-per-year surface ship drumbeat, resulting in a total output of six naval vessels annually.
However, the Naval and Special Ships arm of the business has a growing pipeline of work, including: two corvettes and six offshore patrol vessels (OPVs) under construction for the Philippines; a frigate, an OPV and two landing craft for the Peruvian Navy; as well as a steady drumbeat of domestic orders from the Republic of Korea.
HD HHI is also bidding the Chungnam class FFX Batch III frigate for Australia’s Sea 3000 program to acquire 11 general purpose frigates for the RAN.
In July, HD HHI secured a maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) agreement with the US Navy’s Naval Supply Systems Command, which means the company is qualified to bid for MRO on US Navy supply and combat ships. The annual market value of US Navy MRO is US$20 billion.
As a consequence of this growing workflow, HD HHI intends to open two additional drydocks – numbers four and five in the Ulsan shipyard – to the Naval and Special Ships business. Those drydocks are currently used for the company’s commercial arm, which manufactures dozens of LNG, LPG and bulk carrier ships annually.
On current drydock cycle times, the two repurposed drydocks would allow HD HHI to build or maintain up to eight naval surface ships per year. The entire Ulsan shipyard – which the company operates flexibly – can build 20 ships (both military and commercial) simultaneously and produces up to 50 ships per year.
In addition, the company is rolling out digital twin shipyard software that it aims to use to improve productivity and reduce shipbuilding times by 30 per cent by 2030.
HD HHI recently constructed the ROKS Jeongjo the Great – a KDX III Batch II Aegis destroyer with a full displacement of 11,000 tons - in just nine months from keel laying to launching.
HD HHI is now building the next two ships in the KDX III Batch II series simultaneously.
The ROKS Chungnam FFX Batch III – shortlisted for Australia’s proposed general purpose frigates – has 16 VLS cells, a 5-inch main gun, a new close-in weapons system, torpedoes, decoys, and an Integrated Sensor Mast (ISM) with 4 fixed phased array multifunctional AESA radar.
It is offered alongside Mitsubishi Heavy Industries’ Mogami-class, ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems’ MEKO A-200, Navantia’s Alfa 3000, and Hanwha Ocean’s Daegu-class or the FFX Batch II.
Disclaimer: The writer travelled to Ulsan courtesy of HD HHI.