STX Group focuses on overseas orders to overcome recession

STX Group, a Korean shipbuilding and trading conglomerate, raked in $3.8 billion in the first half of this year from overseas deals for constructing 70 liquefied natural gas carriers and container carriers alone.

With a 30 percent on-year growth in sales, the group has steadily won bids from the world’s major three shipbuilding markets ― Korea, China and Europe ― amid the unfavorable business climate in the wake of the European debt crisis.

The group’s Chinese operation, STX Dalian, kicked off the first half by winning an order worth $450 million from Europe for constructing ten 5,000-TEU (twenty-feet-equivalent-unit) container carriers, which exceeded the total sum of global orders of the kind at that time.

Securing a stable supply of overseas demand has been one of the company’s goals, STX Group said, attributing promising sales records to the company’s focus on environment-friendly, fuel-efficient carriers and value-added vessels, coupled with an aggressive drive for sales.

“Our vessels are especially high in power-efficiency besides being competitive on the blueprint, materials and delivery,” an STX official said.

STX Offshore and Shipbuilding Co. won an LNG carrier order worth $200 million from another European firm, which is one of the three LNG carrier deals confirmed so far in 2012.

STX’s strong performance in Europe is especially noteworthy because the shipbuilding, trade and construction sectors have shrunk because of a slowdown in economic growth.

By Chung Joo-won (joowonc@heraldcorp.com)