Richard Liu: AVIC looking for more cooperation with Greek shipping

An international group with a significant presence in the transport sector and not only, wants to further develop its presence in the Greek market.

AVIC focuses on shipping, recognizing and building on the experience and the size of the Greek shipping, stresses Richard Liu, company’s Chief Representative in Greece in an interview on maritimes.gr

Δημοσίευση: 12 / 12 / 2012

He also talks about how the Chinese shipyards affected by the crisis, the group plans to shipbuilding business, but also for shipping finance from Chinese banks.

– Generally, what are the activities of AVIC;

AVIC means Aviation Industry Corporation of China.

AVIC was a ministry of china aviation and its core business is aviation. With the development of china, AVIC tried to be involved in many activities like real estate, hotel, restaurant, super market, engineering, construction, energy trading, shipbuilding, etc. Generally speaking, AVIC has a fixed asset of 500 billion RMB, half a million employees both in china and abroad and the 22 listed companies and dealing with business with more than 180 countries.

– What the international presence of AVIC;

AVIC is focusing on the aviation business in the international community while we have offices in more than 60 countries and dealing business with more than 180 countries. About shipbuilding, we have office in Athens which is near Intercontinenl.

– Regarding the internal market of China, the transport and logistics are sectors which are increasing. To what extent the AVIC involved in these sectors?

AVIC Logistics benefits from a technical staff who is conversant with the performances of aviation materials and equipment, with work process, international and domestic technical specifications as well as with procurement channels, and from a comprehensive coordination system supervising the supplies for research, development and production of the aviation industry. Its 59 representative offices accredited in aviation related manufacturers or research institutes constitute a kitting and supplying system of aeronautical products, a system of high efficiency to the service of a State strategic industrial sector. Qualifications of AVIC Logistics include international freight forwarding, import and export customs clearance, NVOCC, franchise operations in designated railway lines, storage and transportation of hazardous chemicals, refined oil wholesale operation rights, the right to operate hazardous chemicals, steel import and export franchise and car import and export rights.

– The Chinese shipbuilding industry is now the largest in the world. Right now the industry is in decline. How in your opinion, Chinese shipyards responding?

As well spreaded in the dust now that Chinese shipbuilding industry face a big problem of overcapacity and we believe this will be adjusted due to the market pressure in the next 2 years, we might can expect a lot of shipyards facing cash-flow pressure and to some extreme degree, going to be bankrupt, which happened in the beginning of this year.

There are some reactions now are typical in china, stop taking orders with big loss, like our shipyard, doing something creative to attract clients, like bbhp, etc , desperate with orders to collect cash and change direction to offshore.

– The AVIC has a presence in the shipbuilding industry. Tell us in detail.

AVIC starts the shipbuilding business in 1994. In the first beginning, we acted as trading house and issue the refund guarantee for the shipyard to the shipowner. Later on, we started to arrange finance for the international shipowner and so far we have arranged 0.5 billion USD for our clients and our main finance bank is China exim bank. From 2006, AVIC started to step into shipbuilding, from 2006-2011, we built a new shipyard, TAIZHOU CATIC HEAVY INDUSTRY and bought another two, AVIC WEIHAI SHIPYARD and AVIC DINGHENG SHIPYARD. In these three shipyards, we got 5 drydocks and one slipway. The drydocks are 1 200,000 deadweight and 2 100,000 deadweight and 2 50,000 deadweight. The slipway is 50,000 deadweight. About the future development, since the market is extremely low and a lot of new eco designs are in the market, we are considering something about shipowning to take advantage of the lower market and also going to buy more appropriate shipyard which may give us opportunities in the niche market.

– Prerequisite for funding, mainly from Chinese banks, continues to be ordering new ships?

AVIC is cooporating with many Chinese banks for the refund guarantee and direct finance. I would like to say that according to our experience with Chinese bank, the Chinese banks are more and more experienced and close to the clients and international community in the past few years and some banks already finalized transactions here. But, So far, it is still not for easy for everybody, we believe that it is better and more efficient to work with state-owned groups to explore channels because Chinese banks are much more conservative than European banks in terms of credibility evaluation, which the state-owned group could help and assist.

– In what other situations could be financing and under what conditions?

There are some leasing companies in china but a lot of them are expensive and usually the leasing company asks for a big downpayment. Of course, if the yard offer, It could be cheaper.

– Greek market, is a market that interests you?

Greek market is still the biggest market for Chinese shipyards and we believe Chinese shipyards got a lot of experience in the building of “Greek product”. We are going to make more and more exposure to Greek market to take advantage of the Greek management and industry experience. That is why we have an office here.

– What services AVIC could offer to the Greek shipping?

Shipbuilding, finance service and investment are something we are and will continue to discuss for our friends here