Rebirth of Hong Kong 1981

   Chapter 933 Land, Sea and Air

   Compared with the aviation and automobile industries, Yang Chen is more greedy for the British shipbuilding industry, especially since the United Kingdom is currently promoting privatization reform, many shipyards are facing the dilemma of being annexed by other countries.

   Next, the rapid growth of the inland economy will not only drive the mining and shipping industries, but also the shipbuilding industry.

   Since the 1970s, the world shipbuilding industry has moved eastward, and China, Japan and South Korea have taken over most of the world's ship orders. In that era when a single ship was worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and it was still a US dollar, the shipbuilding industry was also a super profitable industry.

   Of course, Yang Chen wants to get involved in the shipbuilding industry, not because he cares about making a little money, but mainly because of the industrial layout.

   Land, sea and air

   On land, it is mainly automobiles. In the automobile industry, Yang Chen already owns Lamborghini and the car factories previously owned by Landmark. From three-wheelers to tractors to cars and sports cars, his car companies can now manufacture them.

In terms of aviation, after the British government sold the remaining 49% of British Aerospace to him last year, British Aerospace has become his personal private industry, and it is only more famous than the United States in the aviation field. Boeing is a little worse.

The land and air have been laid out, and now the marine aspect is left. Although he now has a fleet, Hong Kong ranks first and second in Global Shipping and Orient Overseas. One is the second largest shareholder, and the other is the first. Major shareholder status.

  In the world shipping industry, he already has a pivotal position. With such a huge fleet in his hands, there is no reason not to buy a shipyard.

   Therefore, Boss Yang, who had tasted the sweetness of the British Aerospace Company, turned his idea to a very well-known British shipyard.

  Since the UK has even sold a heavyweight company like British Aerospace to him, it makes no sense that a shipyard would not sell it. You must know that the British shipbuilding industry is in a very embarrassing situation now.

   Since the end of World War II, the United Kingdom has come down from its hegemony position, and overseas colonies have become independent and separated from British control. The United Kingdom has lost interest in maintaining a large-scale navy.

  Especially after the end of World War II, in order to restore the economy, various countries began to reduce military expenditures. The British Empire, which once relied on the navy to conquer the world, could not keep up with the output of one year in its glory days in the decades after the war.

  The orders for warships have dropped sharply. British shipbuilding owners who used to have a large number of ships have gone bankrupt or voluntarily laid off staff to reduce expenses because they could not receive orders, or because the number of orders was too small.

With the rise of shipping in the 1960s and 1970s, Japan and South Korea, with low shipbuilding costs and national policy support, defeated Europe, which has advantages in shipyard infrastructure, industrial scale, and production capacity.

  The rise of Japan and South Korea's shipbuilding industry has made the European shipbuilding industry with high labor costs even worse. Most of the British shipbuilding companies that have prospered for more than a hundred years have fallen into the dilemma of not having enough funds to pay workers' wages.

   At this time, the British shipbuilding companies, in addition to submitting applications for subsidies to the government, actively followed the footsteps of Mrs. Thatcher and looked for partners and buyers.

   The attributes of the shipping industry have their own political characters. In the war years, the fleet, as an important strategic resource, was the object of fierce competition between the two warships, even at the risk of sinking to avoid falling to the enemy.

   Ships are still like this, not to mention shipyards.

   In particular, the shipyard that Yang Chen took a fancy to, it is a shipyard that can even build an aircraft carrier.

  Harland Wolff shipyard, many people may not have heard of it, or many shipyards in the world, even the most well-known, even inland shipyards, have rarely heard of it.

   To say that the military industry is low-key, except for one Boeing company in the world, it seems that few people know about those companies that can be related to the military.

  It doesn't matter if you haven't heard of it, just introduce its products to you in a while. Big guy will understand.

   In the brutal military industry market competition, survival of the fittest is the eternal law of survival. As time goes by, there will always be some old military enterprises that will be eliminated by the times.

   And the British Harland Wolff Dockyard, an old shipyard with a history of more than 100 years, is also in trouble with the British shipbuilding industry.

   I believe many have seen the movie "Titanic".

   The luxury cruise ship in the film came from the Harland Wolf shipyard.

  From the middle of the 19th century, when Britain completed its industrialization, Harland Wolfe Dockyard transformed from a small shipyard into a pillar enterprise of British military industry after World War I.

  After the baptism of two world wars, Harland Wolff Shipyard is not only the first in the field of civilian ships, but also famous in the manufacture of warships.

  Since the establishment of the shipyard, it has produced nearly 200 warships of various types, and successively built many well-known warships such as the "Forbidden" aircraft carrier and the "Befast" cruiser.

Before and during World War II, the British shipbuilding industry was booming, occupying half of the global ship market for a time, and the output of Harland Wolf Shipyard was even more amazing. At that time, Harland Wolf Shipyard was the British Navy. Six aircraft carriers, two cruisers, and more than a hundred other naval vessels were built, and tens of thousands of ships of all kinds were repaired.

  Although during World War II, the Harland Wolff shipyard and other British shipyards were brutally bombed by the Luftwaffe, and the shipyard was severely damaged.

   But after the war, the Harland Wolff shipyard quickly resumed normal work, and even regrouped for a while, hoping to regain its former glory.

   After a hundred years of vicissitudes, even under the overall weakening of the British shipbuilding industry, Harland Wolff Shipyard has not given up and has repeatedly tried to transform.

   However, the general trend and the handful of military and civilian orders have not changed the same predicament of Harland Wolf Shipyard and other British shipyards.

   The reason why Yang Chen values ​​Harland Wolf Shipyard is that Harland Wolf Shipyard dares to innovate boldly, actively adapt to market changes, and seek market opportunities when faced with difficulties.

   Harland Wolff is not out of the woods, not because its own shipbuilding industry is not good, nor because it is no longer innovative.

   The so-called crime of non-war, the plight of Harland Wolfe Dockyard does not stem from itself, but the general trend of the entire British shipbuilding industry, making it powerless.

  Japan and South Korea have attracted the world's shipowners with their low cost and national policy support. What is the use of the Harland Wolf Shipyard? No matter how good the quality is, no matter how advanced it is, if there is no price advantage, everything is in vain.

  ——

   (end of this chapter)