The first battery-swapping pure battery container ship on the Han River, Huahang Xinneng 1, built with participation from Hubei Changjiang Ship Supply Chain Company. (Photo provided by the interviewed unit)
The national “15th Five-Year Plan” proposal suggests promoting the quality improvement and upgrading of key industries, consolidating and enhancing the status and competitiveness of industries such as mining, metallurgy, chemicals, light industry, textiles, machinery, shipbuilding, and construction in the global industrial division of labor.
How can the shipbuilding industry enhance its competitiveness? As the first pilot province in China for the development of green intelligent ships, Hubei is reconstructing its innovation and industrial chains, exploring ways to build ships like cars and buy ships like shopping on Taobao.
A revolution in ship manufacturing is quietly unfolding along the banks of the Yangtze River.
Green Intelligent Ship Orders Are Booming
“We signed contracts for 20 ships on-site, with at least 30 more intended orders. Our production schedule is already filled through December of next year.” On December 16th, at the completion ceremony for the first phase of the Hubei Changze Ship Heavy Industry Co., Ltd. Intelligent Green Ship Manufacturing Base, General Manager Xu Yuantao introduced that the company’s clients cover cities along the Han River and its tributaries, including Shiyan, Nanyang, Jingmen, and Qianjiang, indicating a very hot market.
Statistics from the Provincial Shipbuilding Industry Association show that in the first three quarters of this year, the province received 289 new shipbuilding and repair orders, of which 219 were for green intelligent ships, accounting for 75.8%. Shipbuilding completions totaled 138 orders, with 85 being green intelligent ships, a share of 61.6%.
Hubei has become a national center for green ship manufacturing—
In Yichang, the Yichang Ship Industrial Park has orders exceeding 50 billion yuan, scheduled through 2027, covering all technological routes including pure electric, LNG, and methanol.
In Wuhan, Wuchang Shipbuilding successfully signed a contract for 2+2 high-end green offshore engineering vessels, marking another breakthrough for “Hubei Intelligent Manufacturing” in the international high-end market.
In Huanggang, Hubei Hechuang Heavy Industry uses block construction technology to increase annual dock output to 5-6 batches, allowing simultaneous construction of over 40 ten-thousand-tonnage LNG carriers.
In the first three quarters of this year, seizing the opportunity for green intelligent transformation, the province’s shipbuilding industry saw explosive growth in new orders, with new order volume reaching 2.558 million deadweight tons, a year-on-year increase of 216.9%.
Building Smart Production Lines: Building Ships Like Cars
In December, the Hubei Provincial Intelligent New Energy Ship Industrial Park in Wuxue is particularly busy, with production line equipment scheduled to be installed by the end of the month.
The person in charge of the park’s construction explained that traditional inland shipbuilding models are mostly labor-intensive, with one-off designs per ship, resulting in long production cycles, low efficiency, low standardization, and high customization costs, making it difficult to meet the demands of green intelligent development.
Therefore, the park is collaborating with Huagong Tech’s Intelligent Manufacturing division, focusing on intelligent production to achieve full-process, low-manpower shipbuilding.
Developing multiple core technologies, including “Full-process Steel Plate Blanking Intelligent Hybrid Nesting Technology,” achieving 100% automation in steel plate cutting and blanking, 99% accuracy in visual recognition, 95% automation in sorting, 100% accuracy in distribution, and nearly a tenfold increase in efficiency.
Developing a digital twin platform enables 1:1 construction of a joint workshop twin driven by multi-source heterogeneous data such as model data, real-time equipment data, and business data. This allows for real-time monitoring of production progress, proactive equipment maintenance, real-time inventory warnings, real-time updates of large-screen reports, effectively assisting production and operational decision-making. It also utilizes virtual-real synchronization technology to achieve real-time synchronization of the production process, making the status of each component and process intuitively visible, significantly enhancing workshop transparency and digital management levels.
The relevant person in charge from Huagong Tech’s Intelligent Manufacturing division stated that upon project completion, hull component production efficiency will increase by 30%, overall design efficiency by 10%, operational costs will decrease by 20%, and product first-pass yield will rise to 95%, forming a replicable, easily promotable standardized implementation plan for ship manufacturing factories.
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