OPCO signs a 172 million-dollar shipbuilding contract

Oriental Precision & Engineering (“OPCO”) has signed a 172 million-dollar shipbuilding deal on August 16, 2011 from Elegant, a Filipino ship company. This order amounts to the 56% of last year’s sales performance by OPCO.

OPCO will build for Elegant the total of 15 ships including the 4.9K bunker tanker, 600P ROP ferry, and 528P LCT craft, and deliver them successively starting March 2013, completing the deliveries by March 2014. The ships will be constructed in both OPCO’s Jinhae shipyard and OMI’s manufacturing facility in Dalian, China.

This is the single biggest contract for OPCO since its inception, and with this deal OPCO’s 2011 sales will have marked 380 million dollars to date, already reaching 67% of this year’s sales target.

Also last June, OPCO received the order to deliver three RO-RO vehicle and passenger vessels, a 26 million-dollar deal; and the company has secured an order to build a 22 million-dollar living quarter for Hyundai Heavy Industries on the 30^th of the same month.

As the world shipbuilding industry has entered the recovery cycle, OPCO reports to have 532 million dollars in standing orders as of August 2011—and more than 70% of these orders are for 2012 and beyond, securing the orders for next years and on.

In its semi-annual report released on August 16, OPCO has reported 170 million dollars in sales, and 7.2 million dollars of profit—up 14.0% and 87.8% from the same period last year. After the excellent performance during the first half of 2011, the company reports its business performance graph is a sharp curve upward also for the second half.