Sri Lanka’s Colombo Dockyard delivers submarine cable-laying ship for Japan’s Kokusai Cable Ship Co.
Colombo Dockyard of Sri Lanka has last week delivered a submarine cable-laying ship for Japan’s Kokusai Cable Ship Co. Ltd.
The latest vessel is Colombo Dockyard’s biggest and most sophisticated vessel and the company has said it wanted to bid to build a dredger for a Sri Lankan government agency.
The high-technology “KDDI Cable Infinity” is meant for subsea operation and cable installation and repair works of both optical communications and power cables, the yard’s Managing Director and Chief Executive D.V. Abeysinghe has been quoted as saying.
Having delivered the first vessel of this type after a two-year period, Colombo Dockyard can now bid to build similar vessels in future, under its strategy of building more sophisticated vessels in niche markets, Abeysinghe has told reporters.
Colombo Dockyard had won the contract from Kokusai Cable Ship Co. against competition from other Asian yards including from Japan, Singapore and Malaysia, he said.
Yukihiro Fujji, who represented Kokusai Cable Ship Co. (KCS), the Japanese owner, at the delivery, had said there was plenty of work for cable ships with more undersea cables being laid for both fibre optic communications and power transmission.
About 99 percent of Japan’s internet traffic goes through submarine cables, Fujji, who is a board member and director of engineering and facility planning department of KCS, which is part of the big Japanese telecom operator KDDI Corporation, has been further quoted as saying.
The home port of KDDI Cable Infinity, which can operate globally, will be Kitakyushu, the northernmost city on Japan’s southern Kyushu Island, from where it will do cable installation and repair in the Asia-Pacific region.
OSL take:
The delivery of the submarine cable laying vessel by Sri Lanka’s Colombo Dockyard to Japan is indicative of the advanced level of skill and expertise in Sri Lanka to engage in the field of production/manufacture. Foreign businesses could therefore look at the possibility of forming partnerships with local companies and expanding such business ventures.
| Article Code : | VBS/AT/24062019/Z_8 |