Shipbuilding Project

Shipbuilding is one of the priority lines of Russian economy development.

OPK, the biggest shipbuilding enterprises of Russia, operates Severnaya Verf, Baltiysky Zavod shipbuilding facilities, Iceberg Design Office, machine building and support facilities.

During the period of OPK’s operations in this industry, since 2003, the shipyards of the association supplied the customers with military and civil vessels costing a total of US$3.2 bn. OPK’s shipyards are the only facilities which were capable to build surface ships of the destroyer, frigate and corvette classes for domestic and foreign customers.

The strategic target of the Shipbuilding Project is to set up a modern world-class compact shipyard which will make it possible to make the entire line of ships ranging up to 300 thou. tons in deadweight. The new shipbuilding complex to annually produce up to 500 thou. tons of deadweight will be set up using the existing facilities of Severnaya Verf and Baltiysky Zavod through revamping and re-equipping the existing facilities and building new ones.

The shipbuilding potential of the united shipyard will make it possible to continue, at lower cost and at shorter time, fulfillment of the entire package of military orders in the sphere of surface ship building, both for the RF Navy and within the framework of international military-technical cooperation.

The united shipyard’s civil ship specialization will be construction of science-intensive, technically complex vessels for prospecting, production and transportation of crude hydrocarbon materials from the oil and gas deposits on the continental shelf. The united shipyard will be capable to fulfil orders for construction of ice ships for geological prospecting, liquefied natural gas carriers, heavy ice tankers to carry oil products.

To exploit the sea shelf hydrocarbon deposits and increase the transportation distance, it will be necessary to build a series of icebreakers, including those propelled with atomic power plants. Possession of atomic technologies in the surface shipbuilding sector, which have been virtually lost in the CIS, is OPK’s special competitive advantage, both in construction and design of such vessels.

In the March of 2007, Baltiysky Zavod finished executing a historical contract for construction of the world’s biggest atomic icebreaker “50 let Pobedy” (50th Anniversary of the Victory).

Under the atomic program, the shipbuilders of the Corporation are also working on floating nuclear power plants, in collaboration with Rosenergoatom and Sevmash shipyard. This guideline is of special interest because of the trend toward using new energy sources and vigorous growth of the Russian economy.