ST. PETERSBURG, June 20. /TASS/. The government should support ship repair companies to keep the fleet sailing over coming 12-18 months, the Arkhangelsk Region’s Governor Alexander Tsybulsky told the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.

"We need to organize high-level services," he said. "During the coming 12-18 months the ships will stop sailing, and the only mechanism of state support is investments in ship repair facilities."

According to the governor, federal-level special leasing conditions for private companies, similar to the program to lease sea and river vessels, for the term of at least 15 years could be used for construction of new and for buying of existing docks of limited age.

Many vessels, working on the Northern supplies program, on deliveries of cargo to big construction sites, including in the Arctic, have used services at European ports. Presently, those ports do not repair Russian vessels. Indonesia and Turkey have raised dramatically the costs. Until recently, about 50% of the Arctic merchant fleet’s vessels have undergone repairing abroad - at shipyards in Turkey, Poland, Estonia, Germany, Latvia, and Norway. The governor forecasted an upsurge of demand for repair services in the Arkhangelsk Region.

The leading shipyards in Severodvinsk - Sevmash and Zvezdochka - will be busy working for the state defense program for five coming years - to 2027. At the same time, quite a few companies in the region are working in the sector of civil vessels repair. More than 11,000 people work for the industry, where about a hundred vessels undergo repairing every year.

While in the past year, the waiting time for repair services was three or four months, in the beginning of the current year it is seven-eight months long. "As of now, the companies take orders for May - June, 2024. Here we speak about planned services, not emergency repairs. We need desperately a program to upgrade the ship repair infrastructures," the governor added.

Ship repair development

The region sees how important it is to build up capacities of the companies that provide cargo deliveries for operators of Arctic projects and for the Northern supplies program. The Arkhangelsk Region’s administration refers to the forecasts by shipowners, where they say the demand for dock repairs of the Arctic fleet in Arkhangelsk alone will jump by 2.5 times in the coming years, which will require the purchase of at least one dock with a capacity of 9,000 tonnes.

During the current year, regular and emergency repairs would be needed for about 100 sea vessels of various types and classes, which dimensions allow entering the seaport of Arkhangelsk, and for about 200 river-sea class vessels and auxiliary vessels for which Arkhangelsk is the home port. This high demand emerges from the busy contracted work of St. Petersburg and Kaliningrad shipyards, where normally about 20% of ship repair has been done. The solution could be to increase dock capacities of enterprises in the Arkhangelsk Region, where presently about 25% of the Arctic fleet undergo repairing.

According to the governor, the plans to build up ship repair capacities must go in line with plans to train specialists for the sector.

Human resources

The governor pointed to a growing shortage of ship repair specialists in the region. "When we speak about the ship repair industry, taking into account the growing demand for such specialists, we understand that today we have a serious shortage of graduates in this field. With 11,000 people employed in this sector, we can give to this industry only 300 specialists a year," he said. "Our task, taking into account the growing demand, is to increase the number of students, which we are doing."

The region has seven institutions to train ship building and ship repairing specialists.

The governor continued by saying that under the conditions of sanctions, Russian shipowners could create their own infrastructures for fleet repairs. "Previously it was impossible, due to the established chains, contractual relations <...> with European ports, which made investments in this industry extremely risky, because the demand for this service was not clear. Today, we have a guaranteed demand, and our task is to speed up the infrastructure upgrade as much as possible, and in future these ties will develop as stable. The goal is to provide high quality, speedy service and possible cost reduction by the optimization of expenses," he concluded.

About the forum

The St. Petersburg International Economic Forum organized by the Roscongress Foundation took place on June 15 through to 18. In 2022, the forum was dubbed: ‘New Opportunities in a New World’. A number of other events took place beyond the business program. Among them were the SME Forum, the Creative Business Forum, the Drug Security Forum, the SPIEF Junior Dialogue, and SPIEF Sport Week. TASS was the event’s official photo hosting agency and information partner.