On February 17, the signing ceremony of major foreign-funded projects of Yangzijiang Shipbuilding Group was held in Jiangyin City, Jiangsu Province. The total investment of the projects in the Wuxi area is expected to exceed RMB 10 billion (about USD 1.39 billion), with foreign investment as the main form. The main investments are in new energy industry projects, the group’s R&D center, supporting facilities and funds.
In response to the national strategic plan of “gasification of the Yangtze River”, Yangzijiang Shipbuilding Group has launched the construction plan of Jiangyin Lingang LNG Industrial Park in 2019. Through years of efforts, the project of LNG storage tanks were officially started on October 8, 2023.
The project is divided into two phases, the first phase is to construct two 100,000 cubic meters LNG storage tanks and supporting works, with an investment of about RMB 1.5 billion (about US$208 million); the second phase is to construct one 160,000 cubic meters storage tank and supporting works, with an investment of about RMB 1 billion (about US$139 million), and the project’s annual turnover will ultimately reach 2 million tons of liquefied natural gas.
Jiangsu Yangzi Jiasheng Terminal Co., Ltd, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Yangzijiang Shipbuilding Group located in Jiangyin Lingang, is mainly engaged in loading and unloading and warehousing services for liquid chemicals. The company owns a 50,000-ton chemical terminal (with a shoreline length of 625 meters) and 99,800 cbm chemical storage tanks.
With the advancement of the construction of Jiangyin LNG Industrial Park, the company is transforming the existing chemical terminal into a public LNG receiving terminal to provide loading and unloading services for the related LNG tanker projects in the LNG Industrial Park.
The project is scheduled to build two berths for 40,000 to 80,000 m3 LNG carriers and corresponding LNG loading and unloading supporting facilities. Meanwhile, the company plans to build 2-4 LNG carriers as supporting services, with a total investment of more than RMB 3.5 billion (about US$486 million).
It is reported that Yangzijiang Shipbuilding Group obtained the LNG MARK III type simulation tank approval certificate issued by China Classification Society(CCS) as early as 2022, marking that the group has realized a key breakthrough in the construction of LNG membrane tanks.
In September of the same year, the group also signed a patent cooperation agreement on LNG MARK III membrane containment system with GTT of France. The signing of the agreement signifies that Yangzijiang Shipbuilding Group has formally obtained the qualification certification from GTT and is qualified to build large LNG carriers applying the GTT MARK Ⅲ membrane containment system.
The LNG new energy industry layout by Yangzijiang Shipbuilding Group will help the application of clean energy in China and provide emergency peak gas source for Wuxi, Changzhou and the surrounding areas. It will also greatly promote the natural gas industry to serve the local economic development and the residents’ life, help the local energy structure adjustment and industrial structure layout, reduce the pollution emission, and contribute to the promotion of the transformation of the regional energy consumption.