Jul. 3 – The largest shipyard in the world, used for the final assembly of big ships and measuring 460 meters long with a width of 135 meters, has opened in Dalian, a coastal city located northeast of China.

The shipyard located in Changxing Island has bypassed the Philippine shipyard built by Hanjin Heavy Industries by 1 meter long and 1 meter wide. It was built with investment coming from the STX (Dalian) Shipbuilding Co., a subsidiary of the Korean company, STX Group.

Xinhua reports that the shipyard is big enough to hold two ships with a dead weight tonnage of 320,000 tons. The Korean company is one of the biggest shipbuilding company in the world and it forecasts that the Dalian shipyard will attract US$3 billion worth of sales by 2012 for bulkers, product tankers and automobile carriers to name a few.

STX (Dalian) Shipbuilding Co. is the first Korean-owned Chinese shipyard able to make an entire ship from start to finish. According to reports, the company spent  US$1 billion for the shipyard’s production facilities, engine assembly plants, a block factory and facilities for molding and forging.

Even as early as 2007,  the company was already able to get orders for 25 ships worth $1.1 billion, including 21 bulk carriers of 58,000 tons capacity and four 6,700 vehicle capacity car carriers for the Dalian shipyard.