Shipbuilding yard in Cebu to retrench half of its work force

CEBU’S pride and one of the Philippines first shipbuilding yards, FBMA Marine Inc., announced on Thursday the retrenchment of close to half its work force with the absence of orders for new vessels and no clear end in sight for the global economic recession.
The company handed out retrenchment notices to around 80 of the company’s 200 regular workers, mostly coming from the support services.
The rest of the workers will wrap up the company’s last projects, two fast-passenger ferries to UK company Wrightlink. The ferries will soon service the Portsmouth-Isle of Wright route in the United Kingdom this year. The company said it is looking for new partners that will bring in cash or new projects for the company, but added it is “assessing possible options.”
Chief executive officer Roberto Aboitiz said the company will make a final decision when the company’s last projects get completed by July this year.
“We have suffered enough. We have sustained negative results for the past several months . We are ever the optimist, but the worldwide recession is too much to bear and we fear it’s going to last a long time,” Aboitiz said in a press conference.
FBMA, together with sister company Tsuneishi (Cebu) Heavy Industries Inc., both in Balamban town in western Cebu, were the Philippines’ first shipbuilding yards, coming into operation 15 years ago.
While Tsuneishi’s bulk-carrier building operations is expanding—it is set to complete its Phase 4, doubling the company’s building capacity—FBMA, with its more specialized fast-passenger vessels and utility boats, were in a more challenging environment.
Doug Border, FBMA chief operations officer, said from 10 to 12 inquiries they had been receiving every year, the number went to zero in the last six months.
He said many of their clients have been having problems accessing credit for the building of new vessels, while others simply have no market anymore. Several projects that FBMA won in biddings all over the world have also been shelved indefinitely or the project canceled entirely.
“We know the problem will persist, but we are doing our best by looking for partners and clients from all over the world,” Border said. “The market just dried up.”
He said they are also linking up with shipbuilding companies with backlogs, in the prospect of giving some of the projects to Cebu.
He said FBMA was supposed to start work on two 38-meter passenger craft for Trinidad and Tobago, a 50-meter superyacht shadow boat, three offshore utility boats and wind-farm support vessels, but all these projects have been suspended or canceled.
Aboitiz said that even when the economy indeed picks up, ship operators will first try to fill the ships that are still running. The rest will then look for cheap secondhand vessels, thousands of which are anchored all over the world with the loss of trade and passenger volume.
Those who are left will have to source for funding and buy new ships, which will take a long time.
“The lead time and the depth of that sequencing will really take a long time,” Aboitiz said.
FBMA assistant vice president of human resources Christopher Camba said the company has set up a help desk that will assist retrenched workers look for other jobs. He said they will also receive compensation. Some of the workers will also be endorsed to Tsuneishi overseas placement firm Aboitiz Jebsen and to the rest of the Aboitiz Group.
Aboitiz said the highly skilled and highly trained production workers will definitely have a hard time looking for a new job.
“That is our new business now: to look for jobs for these workers and to make things easier for them,” he said. “This is painful and we admire our workers for their dedication, commitment and teamwork despite the hard times.”