ESCOLANGO CITES VALUABLE ROLE OF HANJIN IN DEVELOPMENT
Shipbuilder Hanjin Heavy Industries and Construction – Philippines (HHIC-Phil) remains the Subic Bay Freeport’s (SBF) biggest investor with some US$2.3B in direct investments, to date.
“Hanjin is not only a boost to Subic but to the whole country, as well,” Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SBMA) OIC Administrator Randy B. Escolango acknowledged during a recent visit to Hanjin’s Shipyard at Redondo Peninsula to meet the Korean company’s new President Gwang Suk Chung.
Chung invited Escolango to visit Hanjin where the latter also provided key development updates in the Freeport and expressed strong support to the initatives of Hanjin.
“With almost 35,000 skilled Filipino workers employed at Hanjin, on top of the economic activity it generates with its presence and operations, we can matter-of-factly conclude that Hanjin is a major factor in the development of the Freeport and the country,” Escolango said.
Chung expressed appreciation of Escolango’s visit and gesture, pledging to reciprocate SBMA’s collaboration and the Filipino workers’ valuable contributions to the company’s achievements. “We are more than proud of the craftsmanship of the Filipino shipbuilders,” Chung said.
Hanjin is currently building three (3) 20,600 TEU (Twenty-Foot Equivalent Units) container ships, considered among the biggest in the world today. It is also constructing a fleet of liquefied petroleum gas carriers after having successfully delivered four (4) Philippine-made vessels, the first ever of its kind, this year.
Two years after construction of a 280-hectare shipyard in Subic began, Hanjin started operations in 2008, working on an initial order of four (4) container ships.
As of August 2016, Hanjin has already delivered to various shipping companies overseas a total of 98 vessels, with a total export tag price of $5.708 billion.
The company was recently recognized as the Top Exporter for the machinery and transport equipment sector by the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) during the National Export Congress at the Philippine Trade and Training Center.
Chung said the recognition is another milestone in more than 10 years of Hanjin’s productive shipbuilding activity in the Philippines, particularly in Subic, where it had also been acclaimed as a consistent top exporter among registered enterprises in recent years.
The Philippines rank 5th in terms of orders booked among the elite shipbuilding nations in the world, according to the highly-respected Europe-based Clarkson Research. (Vic V. Vizcocho, Jr.)
