UGB #319 - Set sail
#319 - Set sail
However, at a deeper level of consideration, shipping is still a strategic industry.
Especially for military mobilization, the reason why the Rogue Eagle of World War II was able to cope on two battlefields was due to its massive shipping system, which transported a large number of troops, food, ammunition, weapons, and fuel across the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.
According to Ren Zhong's research, throughout World War II, the Rogue Eagle relied on 171 ten-thousand-ton shipbuilding berths from 18 shipyards, building 2771 15,000-ton Liberty cargo ships at a rate of 47 ships per month from 1941-1945!
This was absolutely unique in the world.
At the same time, the Rogue Eagle also built 155 aircraft carriers! Although many of these aircraft carriers were very rudimentary escort carriers, capable of only simple takeoffs of fighters and bombers.
In terms of transportation volume, the supplies provided by the Rogue Eagle to the Great Bear alone were enough for us to devastate the Japanese devils seven or eight times: 14,000 aircraft, 495,000 military vehicles, 12,000 armored vehicles, 32,000 motorcycles, 13,000 trains, 7,944 artillery pieces of various types, and 108,000 submachine guns!
This was achieved even after a large number of transport ships were sunk by the Germans, which shows how vast the Rogue Eagle's maritime transport capabilities were!
However, Ren Zhong didn't want to talk about this aspect now.
The shipping company established by the Zhang family in Hong Kong through the names of their family's collateral relatives, focusing on the Asian market, was called Asian Shipping.
While the enterprise operated by Mr. Chen in Nanyang was called Global Shipping, which would move from Asia to North America and Europe in the future, and was currently only tentatively opening routes from Asia to San Francisco.
Soon, the Zhang family and Mr. Chen found the advantage of the Dawn-class Ro-Ro transport ships, which was that the Dawn-class Ro-Ro transport ships had high diesel engine horsepower and fast speed.
Although the fuel consumption was slightly higher than that of competitors, the timeliness was much stronger.
Similarly, for transportation from Nanyang to the Japanese mainland, ordinary shipping companies would take at least 10 days or more, normally two weeks one way, but for the Dawn-class, it would basically only take a week to complete!
Therefore, Asian Shipping keenly launched the Nanyang to East Ocean weekly service!
Because of the container transportation mechanism, after the containers were pre-packaged at the port, 500 containers could be loaded within a day, and if they kept running non-stop at sea, they could reach their destination in no more than four days! It would then take another day to unload the containers onto the other party's docks.
The launch of this service immediately became very attractive to those transportation businesses that required high timeliness, setting it apart in the shipping industry and attracting a large number of time-sensitive commodity transporters.
The two Dawn-class cargo ships quickly entered a state of full-load transportation, and achieved a book profit in the same month they were put into operation (based on a 30-year ship age asset amortization)!
This was almost a miracle for shipping.
The same was true for Global Shipping. According to the current Liberty ship loading and unloading and speed, shipping from Asia to San Francisco would take at least a month and a half, but with the Dawn-class running at high speed, it would only take 15 days at sea to arrive. In this way, Global Shipping could launch a 20-day limited-time service. With two ships shuttling back and forth, Global Shipping's 20-day limited-time delivery immediately caused a sensation in the local shipping industry, and Global Shipping's business also got off to a flying start.
The success of the two shipping markets greatly encouraged the Zhang family and Mr. Chen. After inspecting the market size, Asian Shipping proposed to expand to 10 Dawn-class ships within 2 years, and Global Shipping proposed a fleet plan to expand to 20 Dawn-class ships within 3 years.
Suddenly, there were more than 20 orders.
Sure enough, the potential of this market was stimulated.
For Dawn Shipbuilding Company, which owns three major shipyards, these orders immediately stimulated the construction of new docks. According to the plan, the new round of dock construction will add 4 ten-thousand-ton docks and 6 six-thousand-ton docks for manufacturing Dawn-class Ro-Ro transport ships and the next-level 6,000-ton Hope-class Ro-Ro transport ships (standard 20-foot containers 900 boxes, standard 40-foot large containers from 450 boxes), and the next next-level 10,000-ton Faraway-class Ro-Ro transport ships (standard 20-foot containers 1500 boxes, standard 40-foot large containers from 680 boxes).
The reason why Asian Shipping and Global Shipping only gave more than 20 ships was because even larger new Ro-Ro transport ships were about to come out. For the shipping market, the larger the transport ship, the more economical it was, of course.
At most in 2 years, the 6,000-ton Hope-class will be launched, and even the 10,000-ton Faraway-class will be launched almost at the same time.
For transport ships, the technical difference between the 3,000-ton and 10,000-ton classes is not that great. The core power subsystem ST70 is now becoming more and more mature. The optimized ST70 localized version, the ST90 diesel engine, has been increased to a 900 mm bore, and the single-engine power has reached 5,000 horsepower. A single unit driving a 6,000-ton class can already push it to a speed of over 18 knots. If it is driven by two S90s, a 10,000-ton giant ship can also run at a speed of over 18 knots.
In the current major shipping transport market, the speed of Liberty-class transport ships is generally 11 knots, and the speed of Victory-class ships is 15 knots. It can be said that Dawn Shipbuilding firmly occupies the speed advantage.
Of course, it is not to say that other countries do not have faster large passenger and cargo transport ships. In fact, in the 1930s, the construction of large ocean liners was mainly about increasing speed. Famous ships such as the "Queen Mary", "Queen Elizabeth", and "Normandie" were all built during this period. Their deadweight tonnage was over 80,000 tons, the main engine was a steam turbine, the power was 160,000 horsepower, and the speed exceeded 30 nautical miles per hour!
This is almost the speed of an aircraft carrier.
High speed, of course, brings high fuel consumption. The ton-nautical mile fuel consumption for high-speed travel at 30 nautical miles per hour is 2.5 times higher than the ton-nautical mile fuel consumption at 18 nautical miles per hour!
Therefore, the normal shipping speed is basically controlled between 15 nautical miles and 18 nautical miles, which is the economical speed obtained after many years of shipping.
With Ren Zhong's cognitive guidance and technical guidance, Asian Shipping and Global Shipping will obviously occupy an absolute dominant position in Ro-Ro transport ships.
Next, after consolidating the bulk cargo transport market, Ren Zhong's next goal is oil tankers!
The rise of the post-war automobile market will generate huge demand for oil in Europe and East Ocean, so in Ren Zhong's plan, oil tankers of 10,000 tons or more have now been included in the research scope. According to the standards of ocean-going oil tankers, the starting oil tanker will be a 15,000-ton handy-size, with a shallow draft, capable of approaching most docks to unload oil.
Next, research will be conducted on 30,000-ton ocean-going, 68,000-ton Panamax (ships with a total length of no more than 274.32 meters and a width of no more than 32.30 meters for canal navigation) large oil tankers, and 160,000-ton Suezmax very large oil tanker plans!
Although this market has its ups and downs, Ren Zhong is not afraid of the shipping cycle because he has a complete upstream and downstream industrial chain, especially during the downturn, he will launch a large-scale expansion plan, guiding the acquisition and merger of those shipping companies that cannot survive, thereby expanding the fleet he controls.
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