Pictures Paint a Thousand Words

Witnessing the making of a ship

This issue marks the return of one of my personal favorites in the magazine -- the Photo Essay. In years past, we have used photo essays to capture the behind-the-scenes activities of businesses which most people never get to see. We have been able to portray geothermal steam plants (of Philippine Geothermal / Unocal), a natural gas rig (Shell Malampaya), courier services (Federal Express), coin minting (Bangko Sentral), and coffee production and roasting (National Coffee Development Board).

Oftentimes, readers are not aware about the nature of some businesses or the high level of workmanship that goes into making world-class products in the Philippines. The lack of awareness is heightened by the fact that many of these products or services are exported or remain unseen to ordinary consumers. One such product is ships.

I recently visited the Tsuneishi and FBMA shipyards on the west coast of Cebu to personally take a look at what was going on. Tsuneishi is a Japanese ship-building company which opened up a shipyard in Balamban, Cebu in joint venture with Aboitiz ten years ago. After painstakingly building the shipyard, Tsuneishi has built 45 ships since 1997 and is now capable of building 14 bulk carriers a year. The yard is a veritable assembly line of ships made by over 3,000 skilled workers from Cebu province.

In contrast, the FBMA yard builds just one high-end luxury ferry per year for overseas clients. On my visit, I stepped on board what eventually will be a ferry servicing passengers in Denmark.

Much of this issue deals with the shipbuilding industry. While we are known as a nation of seafarers, supplying a significant number of the globeÕs seamen and maritime industry workers for tankers to cruise ships, people might forget we also build ships. So read on and find out more about KeppelÕs 100-year-old shipyard (also in Cebu) or check out our photo essay on how ships are built in the Tsuneishi shipyard.