BRITISH SHIPBUILDING

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27277, 31 December 1949, Page 5

BRITISH SHIPBUILDING

Increased Efficiency Essential Keen Foreign Competition NZPA—Reuter—Copyright LONDON, Dec. 29. The British shipbuilding industry, faced with “an alarming dearth of inquiries and new orders, would have to increase efficiency and lower costs, Mr H. .B. Robin Rowell, president of the Shipbuilding Conference, declared today. He was writing in Lloyd’s List and Shipping Gazette Annual Review for 1949.

Mr Rowell said: “ Lower costs depend on cheaper raw materials, such as steel, which depends in turn on cheaper coal. Lower costs also depend on the withdrawal of innumerable Government controls and restrictions and bulk buying methods, which all tend to inflate the general cost level.

“In the testing competitive days ahead the industry cannot afford to carry passengers in the interests of some mistaken idea of full employment. The aim must be to secure the greatest possible measure of sustained and regular employment for all those who normally follow shipbuilding.” The industry absorbed 100,000 workers during the war, some of whom had stayed in the industry. “ This state of affairs,” said Mr Rowell, “ cannot continue, and many will have to return to their former employment.” The industry was now living on a backlog of orders placed in 1947 and 1948. “Total orders booked in 1949 are unlikely to reach 1,000,000 tons gross,- whereas tonnage is being completed at two and a-half times that rate,” Mr Rowell said.

The revival of shipbuilding in countries for which Britain was now building ships was again presenting Britain with the problem of keen competition. Britain was, each year, building less of the world’s tonnage. In September, 1949, Britain was producing 45.5 per cent., compared with 50.5 per cent, the previous. year, and 53.2 per cent, in 1947. He appealed for increased allocations of steel and cheaper raw materials, adding: “We realise with dismay that wage increases and devaluation will send costs up.”