In the first quarter of this year, China's auto exports 1.07 million units, for the first time beyond Japan, becoming the world's largest auto exporters. The significant growth of auto export has driven the international auto transport ship "one cabin is hard to find", and shipping companies and auto enterprises have been ordering ships. Previously, no domestic shipyard was able to build large car ro-ro ships, but now, Chinese shipbuilders are seizing the rare market opportunity to achieve a zero breakthrough. In last year's global order for 74 car carriers, China took 88.4% of the tonnage.
Handheld orders to the sea is difficult China's auto export tropical shipbuilding fever
The port of Taicang, Jiangsu, 60 kilometers from the mouth of the Yangtze River, is the first port for foreign trade in Jiangsu. 23 May, a huge ro-ro cargo ship arrived at the port, more than 130 vehicle feeders have been on standby, more than 4,300 cars are about to be loaded on board and sent to Europe.
Behind the busy workload of the shuttlers is the surge of China's auto exports in recent years. According to the statistics of China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, in 2020, China's auto exports will reach 1.082 million units; in 2021, 2.015 million units; and in 2022, 3.111 million units. In the first quarter of this year, China exported 1.07 million cars, surpassing Japan for the first time and becoming the world's largest auto exporter.
With the surge in car exports, the happy "trouble" came along. Car carrier "a cabin is difficult to find", the rent is a record high. In order to increase the capacity, it can be said that "eight immortals cross the sea, each show their talents". The freight company of Taicang Port in Jiangsu even transformed the pulp ship from South America, which was to return empty, so that the original pulp ship with no cargo could be transformed into a car carrier.
Taicang International Container Terminal Operations Department Operations Supervisor Liu Tiebin: Each hatch can reach 8 layers of loading capacity, the maximum capacity of the whole ship in 2500 carloads.
But even so, it still can't meet the fast growing demand of car export transportation.
Guangzhou port is also busy shipping cars out. Guangzhou Port Nansha Auto Port, the largest professional auto ro-ro terminal in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Bay Area. 2022, Guangzhou Port's foreign trade exports of cars exceeded 100,000 units, an increase of more than 300%. From January to April this year, Guangzhou Port's foreign trade exports of automobiles grew by more than 90% year-on-year.
It is understood that there are about 700 car carriers worldwide, and those operated by Chinese shipowners account for less than 10% of the total global capacity. Compared with the continuous blowout of automobile export situation, obviously the capacity is seriously insufficient. In order to make up for this "short board", shipping enterprises are stepping up the layout, many shipping companies and automobile manufacturing enterprises have gone out to order ships.
From zero to one, Chinese ships cracked the key technology of large car roll-on/roll-off ship
In guangdong ship international, the reporter boarded a car ro-ro ship which can load about 7000 small cars. This car carrier is 200 meters long, 38 meters wide, 42 meters high, with 13 decks, called the sea "giant". To the reporter's surprise, this "giant", but "skin" is very thin.
The steel plate used to build this car ro-ro ship is only 6 mm, the thickness of less than one-third of the diameter of a nickel, while the weight of a small car are more than a ton. At the same time, the car carrier in order to facilitate car driving, the cabin using column structure, the lack of "load-bearing wall", which puts forward harsh requirements for the stability of the deck.
In order to ensure the stability of the thin plate, workers will weld rows of longitudinal bones and T-beams on the thin plate. In order to ensure the stability of the T-beam, they also designed a special "anti-deformation" process. Under the guidance of the engineer, the workers use a gun to heat part of the T-beam. Under the effect of thermal expansion and contraction, the T-beam becomes an arc-shaped structure with high center and low sides.
To build a ship truly suitable for car transportation, there is also a huge challenge of internal structure design. 7000 standard car transportation ships have 126 movable decks, while the same size of passenger ro-ro ships have only 20 to 30 movable decks. The large number of movable decks poses a huge challenge to design, installation and commissioning.
In order to solve this problem, the R&D personnel modeled everything from a small wire rope to a screw, with the threads on the bolts clearly visible, when making the 3D model.
From 2021 to now, China Shipbuilding Group has accumulated orders for 7,000-vehicle to 9,200-vehicle series car carriers to 35 vessels, accounting for 27% of the global market share. In the field of large car carrier manufacturing, China's shipbuilding industry has achieved a historic leap from catching up to running neck and neck.
