| Tsuneishi to establish repair yard in Indonesia |
| Japanese shipbuilding group Tsuneishi Holdings Inc has said it will invest USD40 million in establishing a ship repair facility in Indonesia. Tsuneishi’s president and chairman, Yasuharu Fushimi, cited Indonesian president Joko Widodo’s bid to develop his country into a maritime nation as the reason for the investment. “We see a big potential to develop Indonesia’s shipping industry,” Fushimi said in a 26 May statement during a visit by Franky Sibarani, chief of Indonesia’s Capital Investment Coordinating Board. “We’ve estimated that around 3,293 ships will require repair services each year.” Sibarani has invited Tsuneishi officials to visit Indonesia to choose a location for the yard, with possible sites including Lampung, Lamongan, Surabaya, Makassar, and Manado. The facilities are expected to generate 1,000 jobs in Indonesia. Fushimi said the investment would include a repair facility and a shipbuilding yard but declined to give an exact time frame as to when the latter would be built. In recent years Tsuneishi has been investing in China and southeast Asia to capitalise on the region’s low labour costs. It has operated a shipbuilding yard in Cebu, the Philippines, since 1994, and in 2003 the company opened a yard in Zhoushan, China. |