COSCO Corporation (Singapore) Limited announced Friday that its subsidiary COSCO Shipyard Group has gained the first batch of Floating Storage and Offloading Unit (FSO) new building and conversion contracts.

According to a statement issued by the company, the contracts, involving an FSO new building project, as well as conversions of six single-hull vessels and two heavy lift vessels, are worth 74.8 million U.S. dollars.

"We are particularly pleased with our first FSO new building project. This marks our Group's entry into the lucrative offshore engineering market," Ji Haisheng, COSCO Corporation's vice chairman and president, was quoted as saying in the statement.

He added that the clients' confidence that COSCO would complete this specialized job for delivery in good time is testimony to the growing technical competence of the Chinese shipbuilding industry in general and COSCO in particular.

The 52,000-dead-weight-ton (dwt) FSO unit will be built at COSCO Zhoushan Shipyard in January 2007, according to the statement.

A subsidiary of China Ocean Shipping (Group) Company and listed on the main board of the Singapore Exchange, COSCO Corporation is the largest ship repair and marine engineering and shipping group in China.

Source: Xinhua