Yangzijiang Shipbuilding Posts Record Profit
China's shipbuilding industry has grown by leaps and bounds over the last year, and so have its profits. Last week, privately-held Yangzijiang Shipbuilding reported a record-setting profit of $580 million in the first half, up by 37 percent year-on-year.
Yangzijiang is China's largest private shipbuilder, and a bellwether for its commercial shipbuilding industry. The yard's revenue was slightly down in the first half, due to a lower share of container ships in its mix of projects during the period. This was offset in part by a higher share of dual-fuel orders in its boxship portfolio, since the technology is more expensive and yields better margins for the shipbuilder. Dual-fuel vessel orders account for about three-quarters of the yard's orderbook.
In addition to performance at its own yards, profits were driven in part by operations at two Japanese joint ventures, Zhoushan Tsuneishi Shipbuilding and Yangzi Mitsui Shipbuilding, which contributed a combined $67 million in profits.
New orders are coming in a bit more slowly than expected this year, Yangzijiang reported. The shipbuilder received just 14 new orders worth a combined $540 million in the first half, less than a tenth of its full-year order target for 2025. However, the full-year outlook is still good, as it is holding more than $2 billion worth of letters of intent for more orders, according to ratings agency CGS International.
This is not an immediate issue - Yangzijiang has a backlog of 236 ships worth a combined $23 billion on order, near a record high, giving it a long runway in almost any market - but the slowdown is a change compared to last year's ordering boom. The Trump administration's planned port fees on Chinese-built ships (as proposed by the U.S. Office of the Trade Representative) is giving shipowners a reason to look at alternative shipbuilders outside of China; at the same time, tariff concerns have prompted some owners to rethink their ordering plans or wait for more clarity.
Yangzijiang broke ground on a wholly new shipyard, Yangzi Hongyuan, in February 2025. However, it has shelved a plan for a greenfield expansion yard, Jiangsu Yangzi Runze Shipbuilding, which was to be located next to the existing Yangzi Mitsui Shipbuilding JV facility, according to CGS International's latest advisory. The pause is among the few signs of any letup in the relentless growth of Chinese shipbuilding. Since 2023, the strong demand for Chinese-built ships has driven a wave of restarts at yards that were shuttered during the shipbuilding downturn of the 2010s, reviving old names under new ownership.