Russia could not save the shipyard occupied in Crimea, so it is going to sell it

The United Shipbuilding Corporation of Russia (USC) is preparing a list of shipyards for sale, and then will coordinate it with the Russian government to sell off the enterprises.

This is reported by Economic Truth.

According to a statement by the chairman of the board of VTB Bank and the board of directors of USC, Andrei Kostin, today some of the corporation’s shipyards are idle without orders, in particular, the Sevastopol plant in Crimea, occupied by the Russians.

“There are no orders at it, 200 employees remain there, that is, the vast majority of employees have been laid off. And orders are unlikely to come,” Kostin said.

According to him, as long as there are orders at the shipyards, the corporation will not close them or sell them, but in general the industry needs “major restructuring”.

It is worth noting that the Russian Federation has been observing a trend towards increasing the cost of shipbuilding for a long time. The reasons for this may be sanctions and the general unavailability of foreign components for ships and their spare parts.

Almost all Russian shipbuilding plants are critically dependent on imported equipment, and almost all navigation equipment is manufactured by foreign specialists, in particular, European and Japanese companies. In contrast, for example, China has its own production chains, so the final cost of shipbuilding there will be much lower.

It is also worth mentioning that Russian plants do not have the same scale as Chinese ones and are not able to withstand schedules – moreover, many of the Russian shipbuilding plants were built during the USSR and require deep modernization.

We should not forget about the risk of secondary sanctions – even if Russia builds ships, it will be difficult for it to insure them, certify them, etc., which China can do much easier.USM previously reported that Russian grain exporters plan to buy a fleet in China.