Russia’s Shipbuilding Yards Half Empty Because of Lack of Workers and Lack of the Modern Technologies Operators Want, Branch Experts Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 6 – Because the share of Russian riverine ships that are more than 20 years old has doubled since the end of Soviet times, Moscow has announced a new three-year program to build up the branch. But it is already clear that this plan will fail given the lack of skilled workers in the shipbuilding branch and the lack of the most modern technologies there.

            That is the message experts in the branch have given to Mikhail Zubov of the Svobodnaya Pressa news outlet. They say that even if the three-year plan were successful, it would only boost the number of ships by three percent when far more are needed if riverine shipping in Russia is to revive (svpressa.ru/science/article/497851/).

            The plan is not ambitious enough and fails to recognize the bottlenecks in shipbuilding. In 2024, Russian yards built only 250 ships of all kinds, of which only half were 50 tons or more and of which only 80 were ships intended for purely civilian use. And now, domestic civilian shipping is on track to fall short of needs by about 1600 ships.

            Compared to China, South Korea and Japan, the world leaders in shipbuilding, Russia’s hare of the world production of ships is “laughably small,” just 0.27 percent, Zubov says. But instead of seeking a breakthrough, Moscow policy makers are applying bandages to a dying industry.

            There are still 166,000 workers in civilian shipbuilding yards, but they are aging and without the skills needed to produce the most modern ships which rely heavily on the kinds of electronics Russian industry can’t deliver. And because of that, Russian operators don’t want to buy ships from Russian yards, preferring when possible to get them from abroad.

            Soon, however, Moscow may have no choice either to admit it is no longer a serious player in this area or take radical steps – and its demographic problems may force that issue sooner than many in the Kremlin appear to recognize, Zubov suggests.

            Vladimir Rudomyotkin, vice president of the Russian Transportation Academy, says that a standard barge can carry more than 200 trucks and needs only two or three people to operate as compared to the 200 to 250 drivers that the trucks do. Consequently, building barges is far more efficient not to mention that they are far less ecologically harmful than trucks.