Colombo Dockyard represents Sri Lankan ship repair and shipbuilding at Norshipping 2015

The Colombo Dockyard team with the Ulrik Qvale & Partners team at the Exhibition

Sri Lanka’s pioneer shipbuilding and ship repairing facility, Colombo Dockyard PLC participated at one of the biggest international shipping exhibitions, ‘Norshipping 2015,’ during from 2-5 June in Oslo, Norway. 

Colombo Dockyard has been a regular participant at many marine exhibitions, such as Posidonia, Greece, SMM – Germany and other platforms over the past four decades. This is the third instance Colombo Dockyard has participated as an active exhibitor at the Norshipping exhibition. 

The shipyard has been flying the Sri Lankan flag and promoting Colombo as a competitive repair and building centre in the South Asian region in Europe and global platforms. 

Norwegian ship owners and managers represent a large share of the world’s offshore and floating tonnage. This naturally makes them one of the biggest spenders on ship building, dry docking and maintenance.

This mega international marine exhibition has been a meeting place for global shipping fraternity stake holders such as shipyards, machinery and equipment suppliers, classification societies, flag states and shipbrokers, to name a few. 

This year with more than 992 exhibitors from all around the world, the event attracted 32,300 industry visitors to roughly 45,000 square metres of exhibition space. This platform provides an effective mode for Colombo Dockyard to promote its facilities and especially the products, i.e. custom built offshore support vessels to the Norwegian/European markets. 

The positive developments in the country with peaceful environment conducive for business has been instrumental in many European clients looking at Colombo seriously as a potential ship repair and building facility. 

During this mega event, some of the factors highlighted to the potential clients were: Colombo’s strategic location close to the main marine trading routes, minimal diversion for vessels calling to discharge in the Indian coast, quality repair services, safe working environment, Japanese expertise available through collaboration with Onomichi Dockyard, faster turnaround times and competitive rates. 

The shipbuilding sector highlighted the wide product portfolio on offer for the offshore vessels sector, mainly Sri Lanka’s market proven anchor handling tugs, offshore platform support vessels, crew boats and passenger ferries.  

Colombo Dockyard teamed up with Ulrik Qvale & Partners as its representative in Norway to maximise the impact at this exhibition. 

The Colombo Dockyard team was led by Dr. Toru Takehara – Chairman, Benny Fernando – Assistant General Manager (Ship Management and Invoicing), Darshana Chandrasekera – Head of Marketing (Ship Repairs) and Prince Lye – Head of Marketing (Ship Building).