CSBC Corporation, Taiwan

CSBC Corporation, Taiwan is the island's largest shipbuilder and the yard the navy turns to when a programme has to be built at home. Founded on 7 November 1973 and headquartered in the Siaogang district of Kaohsiung, it runs shipyards at Kaohsiung and Keelung with an office in Taipei, and it privatised through a public offering in 2008 while the Ministry of Economic Affairs kept a substantial minority stake. Its shares trade on the Taiwan Stock Exchange. The company groups its work into merchant ships, ship repair, naval and governmental vessels, offshore wind steel structure and industrial business, large barge and tug business, and a renewable energy service line. Its own summary is blunter than that list, describing three current activities: merchant shipbuilding and maintenance, naval and official ship construction and maintenance, and offshore wind.

Naval and governmental vessels have become the largest part of the order book, accounting for roughly 60 percent of operations by 2021. CSBC built Cheng Kung-class frigates under licence, Ching Chiang-class patrol ships, Kuang Hua VI missile boats, the Panshih fast combat support ship, Chiayi-class offshore patrol vessels for the Coast Guard Administration and the Da Wu rescue and salvage ship delivered in 2024. Two programmes define the current decade. The Yushan-class landing platform dock, keel laid in 2020 and launched the following year, gave Taiwan its first modern amphibious ship, and the Hai Kun indigenous defence submarine, unveiled in 2023, took the yard into pressure hull work it had never attempted. Hai Kun completed its first sea trial in 2025 and fired a Mark 48 torpedo in 2026.

Merchant shipbuilding is the older trade and still the broader one. The yard has delivered bulk carriers, container ships, product carriers, tankers, cement carriers, reefer vessels, tug boats and an oil drilling rig, and it built the Blue Marlin and Black Marlin heavy-lift semi-submersibles that made its name outside Asia. Ship repair is a smaller line covering bulbous bow retrofits for fuel saving, bottom and hull plate renewal, watertight bulkhead insertion, propeller and rudder work, scrubber retrofits and post-fire reconstruction. Repair accounted for only three to five percent of revenue at the end of the last decade, small next to newbuild but useful for keeping docks and trades busy between hulls. The Kaohsiung yard carries the heavier plant, including giant cranes, plate rolling and bending machines, long seam and cold bevel milling machines and cross welding machines.

Offshore wind pulled CSBC into a new industry. The yard fabricates pin piles, transition pieces and pile grippers for developers including Orsted, and it built the Green Jade installation vessel for its joint venture with DEME. Its industrial business supplies large steel structures, machinery and offshore engineering assemblies, and the large barge and tug fleet handles heavy transport, hoisting and marine logistics. The renewable energy service line adds wave power research, turnkey offshore wind services and nuclear power plant work.