Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) is to spin off its shipbuilding business into two new groups, one of which will build ships while the other will manufacture hull blocks.
Currently MHI is ranked as Japan’s second biggest shipbuilder, following Japan Marine United, and the move will see construction of large-sized commercial ships at the company’s facilities at Nagasaki transferred to the two new firms. However, MHI will separate cruise ship construction from its other commercial ship construction and operate it as an engineering business under a new organisation to be launched within the group’s commercial aviation and transportation systems’ business domain. New ship construction will focus on LNG and LPG carriers, vessels expected to be in strong demand. JS
