The "Polar", a new generation of ice-breaking scientific research vessel designed and built independently by my country, recently made its public debut at China Shipbuilding Corporation's Guangzhou Shipbuilding International in Guangzhou. During the interview at this shipyard, the reporter found that in addition to high-tech ships like the "Polar", there are also many green ships, and their order volume is rising sharply.

This "large-capacity" super ship can carry up to 16,616 standard containers at a time. This is also one of the largest container ships currently built in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.

Why do foreign trade companies favor this shipyard so much? By analyzing the current orders of Guangzhou Shipyard International, we found that more than 60% are high-tech, high value-added methanol dual-fuel or LNG dual-fuel new green ship types. These orders are inseparable from the green shipbuilding innovation that GSI is vigorously promoting.
Compared with traditional fuel container ships, dual-fuel powered ultra-large container ships can reduce 20% carbon, 85% nitrogen oxides and 99% sulfur emissions, greatly reduce environmental pollution, meet the world's most stringent emission standards, and can Flexibly deployed on important routes around the world. This has also made GSI become the domestic shipbuilding company with the largest number of dual-fuel "green ship" orders.
"Tight docking period, fast progress" to ensure quality and quantity and improve efficiency
“The docking period is tight and the progress is fast”, this is what reporters often hear during interviews. At Guangzhou Shipbuilding International, due to the increasing number of orders, almost all construction tasks are completed ahead of schedule, and some are even delivered three or four months in advance with guaranteed quality and quantity.
The shipyard is the working platform and key site for shipbuilding in shipyards. At the dock, we saw that after the "Polar" was undocking and launching, the four ships behind it were about to dock and start construction.
A variety of bicycles shuttle smoothly through the safety area. When something happens, the workers on the bicycles will call each other, come up with drawings to solve the problem, and communicate with each other. In the staff and shipowners' dining room, each dining table is marked with each owner's unit. After finishing the meal and removing the tableware, everyone began to "brainstorm" and work on site.
“Digital intelligence” upgrade saves manpower and increases efficiency
Ship manufacturing is a huge and complex project, involving 8 major links and more than 1,000 processes from parts to finished ships. At GSI, this traditional manufacturing industry has now become smarter and more efficient.
How to build a big ship? In more than three months, a ro-ro passenger ship with 12 decks, an area of over 20,000 square meters, and a capacity of carrying 600 cars and more than 1,800 people at the same time was born.
As a labor-intensive heavy industry, shipbuilding used to rely on a large number of laborers. Through digital transformation, a group of "robots" and traditional industrial workers are on duty simultaneously and working together.
Taking the ship thin plate segmentation "digital intelligence" workshop as an example, the entire assembly line is equivalent to a giant ship hull "thin plate segmentation printer" that can "print" 4.5 thin plate segments per day, which is three times the number of traditional production methods. The entire workshop has been reduced from a team of more than 200 people to about 50 people, which not only saves manpower, but also improves process quality.
The new intelligent and green shipbuilding model is driving China's shipbuilding industry towards high quality. Data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology show that from January to November 2023, the national shipbuilding completion volume was 38.09 million deadweight tons, a year-on-year increase of 12.3%; the number of new orders received was 68.45 million deadweight tons, a year-on-year increase of 63.8%. As of the end of November 2023, the number of orders on hand was 134.09 million deadweight tons, a year-on-year increase of 29.4%. China's three major shipbuilding indicators have achieved overall growth.