Homo sapiens

the other side.

After more than two years of capacity expansion.

New Luzon Shipbuilding Company currently has an annual shipbuilding production capacity of 7 to 8 million deadweight tons. It can produce everything from various inland river boats to transport ships with a load capacity of 100,000 tons.

Especially this year, due to the application of new materials, coupled with the precision parts and large gas turbines that can be produced by themselves, the shipyard has basically achieved 96% localization of parts.

Except for some electronic equipment, other spare parts can basically be produced by ourselves.

In fact, in terms of electronic equipment, shipyards only use it on civilian ships. Military ships only use biochips and biosensors, and do not use imported electronic equipment.

As the current three Musketeers of shipbuilding in the world, South Korea, China, and Japan have now attached great importance to Luzon, a newly emerging shipbuilding force.

For example, Hyundai Heavy Industries, Daewoo Shipbuilding, and Samsung Heavy Industries at this time.

These three South Korea shipbuilding giants are among the top ten shipyards in the world, especially Hyundai Heavy Industries, which is the world's largest shipyard.

Although Luzon’s shipbuilding capacity is less than one-fifth of South Korea’s.

But Hyundai, Samsung and Daewoo have not despised New Luzon Shipbuilding Company. On the contrary, they have regarded it as a huge threat at this time.

Especially Samsung Heavy Industries, whose core business is the production of LNG carriers.

Park Hyo-young, vice president of Samsung Heavy Industries, is at the shipyard on Geoje Island.

However, he did not come to inspect shipbuilding this time, but to one of the ship technology research and development departments.

Pu Xiaoying looked at the gas cylinder in front of her: "Is this the special gas storage material developed by the Luzon people?"

"Yes, vice president." Li Changtai, chief engineer of the LNG project, replied with a solemn expression.

In fact, since Homo sapiens launched gas storage bottles containing crystal sponges in Luzon, it has attracted the attention of all parties, especially related companies.

Since Luzon is an archipelagic country, those who tried to smuggle gas cylinders containing crystal sponges were caught fishing and disappeared quietly in Luzon.

Therefore, although many forces are aware of the existence of this technology, no samples have been obtained.

It was not until some time ago that Homo sapiens established joint ventures in Siam and Malaysia that some gas cylinders were smuggled out.

It was at this time that Samsung Heavy Industries obtained crystal sponge samples through smuggling channels.

Li Changtai continued: "Vice President, this special gas storage material can store more than 500 kilograms of methane per cubic meter, which is slightly lower than liquefied natural gas. But this is not the key. The most critical thing is this The material does not need to be maintained at low temperatures or under high pressure."

Park Xiaoying is not a novice, so she naturally knows what this means: "In other words, the other party's gas storage and transportation costs will be lower than our LNG ships?"

"Yes, there is no doubt about it." Li Changtai was very sure.

As the chief engineer of an LNG ship, he is very aware of the difficulties faced by LNG ships during transportation, which is the need to continuously maintain low temperature and sealing.

Once the low temperature cannot be maintained, the entire ship of LNG will expand rapidly.

At this time, the LNG ship has two options: either deflate and release the vaporized natural gas into the atmosphere; or wait for the expanded natural gas to blow the entire ship into the sky.

This kind of uninterrupted low-temperature liquefied transportation must be equipped with special refrigeration equipment, and ordinary refrigeration equipment cannot be used at all.

Specialized ultra-low refrigeration equipment, which can operate in ultra-low temperature environments, non-deformable invar steel storage tanks, sophisticated monitoring systems, and supporting power generation and distribution systems (prepare at least two sets).

In addition, the production of LNG ships also faces a patent issue.

Regardless of the major shipyards in South Korea and China, which account for more than 90% of the global market share in the LNG ship market, they may not necessarily be profitable.

Park Xiaoying is very clear about this situation. Their profit from Samsung Heavy Industries on LNG ships is only about 5% of the order price.

Taking a large LNG ship costing US$200 million as an example, Samsung Heavy Industries only earns US$10 million per ship.

However, Samsung Heavy Industries has to pay a patent fee of about US$10 million to the French GTT company. This is not a one-time buyout, but a royalty equivalent to about 5% of the order price for each LNG ship.

This patent fee still has to be paid. After all, GTT's natural gas cryogenic containment system technology is the core technology of current LNG ships. If any ship company wants to build LNG ships and operate them globally, then this money can only be paid obediently. .

Now that another technical route is in front of us, it is no wonder that shipbuilding companies such as Samsung Heavy Industries, Hyundai Heavy Industries, and Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering pay so much attention to it.

"Chief Engineer Li, can that kind of gas storage material be copied?"

"Sorry, I have been discussing with the materials laboratory for more than half a month, and the materials laboratory said that mass production is not possible." Li Changtai looked a little frustrated.

Park Xiaoying frowned: "Why can't it be copied on a large scale? Is it because special raw materials are used? Or is it a rare element?"

But what Li Changtai said next made Park Xiaoying's heart freeze:

"From the material analysis results, this gas storage material is a new material formed by biological nanostructures. If it is a laboratory-level replica, we can create similar nanostructures. The problem is that it cannot be mass-produced, especially It’s low-cost mass production.”

Park Xiaoying recalled the intelligence from the commercial investigation department and found application scenarios in Luzon, Hongsawady, Siam and other places. It can indeed be seen that the production volume of this gas storage material is very large.

The gas storage materials produced by Homo sapiens are not only used on methane transport ships, but also in large methane storage tanks in ports and cities, large storage tanks in methane fermentation plants, on-board gas storage bottles for cars, and large storage tanks in thermal power plants. Gas tanks, small gas storage bottles for daily use by residents, gas storage bottles for emergency power generation, etc.

With such a huge production volume, if the production cost is too high, it will obviously not be put into commercial application so quickly.

"The production cost of the gas storage material we imitated in the laboratory is about US$2.73 million per cubic meter. Even in large-scale production, it is difficult to reduce the cost per cubic meter to less than US$500,000."

Upon hearing this cost, Park Xiaoying gave up immediately.

According to the transport capacity of LNG ships of more than 100,000 cubic meters, if new gas storage materials are to be used, approximately 200,000 cubic meters will be needed.

Let alone US$500,000 per cubic meter, Samsung Heavy Industries cannot afford even US$50,000 per cubic meter.

They are in it to make money, not to run a loss-making business.

The high cost of imitating gas storage materials has destined a series of shipyards such as Samsung Heavy Industries to be unable to imitate gas storage materials themselves for a long time to come.

But Park Xiaoying saw a huge crisis.

Now the methane carriers of New Luzon Shipbuilding Company have appeared in droves in Southeast Asia and the Ceylon Ocean.

According to data from international shipping agencies, there are currently 173 methane carriers under the New Luzon Shipping Company. Although most of them are dual-purpose carriers and have a displacement of about 20,000 tons, their total tonnage has exceeded 5.3 million. Ton.

What's more, in Park Xiaoying's view, the threat of that kind of dual-purpose transport ship is even higher.

After all, when the LNG ships produced by Samsung Heavy Industries go to West Asia to transport natural gas, they can only go there as empty ships. The empty ships go to the destination, which is basically wasted on the five to six thousand kilometers.

However, the ships of New Luzon Shipping Company can transport large quantities of commodities to the Persian Gulf and then transport methane back.

This is equivalent to being in the process of transportation once and for all. There is no gap period. In addition, there is no need for a low-temperature containment system, and the cost has dropped significantly.

No wonder Park Xiaoying is facing a formidable enemy. New Luzon’s transportation cost advantage is so obvious that it will inevitably put huge pressure on LNG ships.

If this problem cannot be solved as soon as possible, Samsung Heavy Industries' LNG ship business will be over sooner or later.

In fact, Samsung Heavy Industries has been affected to a certain extent.

Originally, Samsung Heavy Industries planned to shut down the Samsung Shipyard in Myeongju Port, China, in September this year, but now it has been moved forward to July because the shipyard's business has decreased.

Park Xiaoying thought about it for a long time and decided to contact the heads of Hyundai Heavy Industries, Daewoo Shipbuilding and other companies to discuss how to deal with the threat of New Luzon.

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