The market's appetite for new shipbuilding capacity is witnessed by events at South Korea's SPP Shipbuilding, based in Tongyeong, whose orderbook now extends to 110 ships, even though it has so far only delivered eight vessels. Founded in 1997, as a crane builder, SPP took its first steps into shipbuilding as recently as 2004, as a supplier of blocks to established yards such as STX Shipbuilding, Samsung Heavy Industries, and Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering. By 2005, the company had secured its first order for a fully-built ship through brokers, in the shape of a series of 50,000dwt product tankers for Turkey's Geden Lines.
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