South Korea's Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI), the world’s biggest shipbuilder and a leading offshore facilities contractor, announced Thursday that it completed the first phase of the four-year-long plan for localizing offshore facilities equipment and components that the company has mostly secured from overseas suppliers.

Since September last year, HHI and its local offshore equipment supply partners have been working on localizing key equipment for offshore facilities. Now, they completed developing 74 equipment and received an approval from its clients for the use of 31 items for the on-going projects in HHI’s offshore yard in Ulsan, South Korea.

Under the plan, HHI will continue to work on localizing a total of 151 major equipment including pressure vessels and chemical injection pumps for semisubmersibles and FPSO (floating production, storage and offloading), and subsea pipelines in cooperation with the local small and medium-sized partner companies by 2018.

Upon completion of the plan, the Ulsan-based shipbuilding company will be able to lower equipment procurement costs and improve process management for facilities, while its partners will have chances to expand into new overseas markets.

The plan is a part of HHI’s long-standing shared growth policy it has been pursuing to help domestic equipment and material suppliers to develop new products, improve product quality, and enter into new markets. In 2009, HHI supported local venders to be listed on the venders’ list of the major overseas clients and in 2013, the company set up “The Committee for Localizing Valves for Industrial Plants” in association with Samsung Heavy Industries, Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering, and local valve suppliers.

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