Hengli Books 207 Ships in Six Months, a Record for a Single Yard
Backlog of about 380 vessels through 2030 with production running at seven ships a month
China's state-owned shipyards dominate the global orderbook, but their full slots are creating openings for privately held competitors. Hengli Heavy Industries has used that space to become the world's largest single shipyard measured by order backlog.
In its quarterly report released on 24 August, Hengli Heavy said it had received 207 vessel orders in the first half of the year, an all-time global record for a single yard. State-owned CSSC remains the world's largest shipbuilder overall, but its operations are distributed across multiple facilities in China. Hengli's half-year total is nearly twice the number of orders it received in all of 2025. Current backlog stands at about 380 ships through 2030, with production running at roughly seven vessels a month.
Three quarters of the orders were for tankers and boxships, matching both prevailing demand patterns and the yard's stock in trade, which is batch series building and on-spec construction. That model suits owners who want a delivery date more than a bespoke specification, and it is the reason container ship orders that once went to Korea are now landing in Dalian.
Management is investing heavily in infrastructure and workforce to increase throughput and free up slots in later years. The recruitment objective is to hire another 100,000 people by the end of 2026, roughly the payroll of the entire US shipbuilding sector, on top of the 110,000 already employed.
The financial effect has been sharp. Revenue rose 250% in the first half, and net profit rose 450% to about $540m.
The yard's history runs through the previous cycle. It was founded in 2006 by Korean conglomerate STX as STX Dalian, saw considerable success in the boom years, and went into bankruptcy by 2015 in the downturn that followed. The site sat idle until 2022, when it was bought by the Hengli Group conglomerate, relaunching in 2023 as one of many Chinese private yards to restart during the current ordering boom.
Hengli Group took the shipyard unit public in 2024 and 2025 through a transaction with Guangdong Songfa Ceramics, a small-cap Shanghai-listed consumer tableware company. Hengli Heavy Industry's stock trades under the Songfa name.
