South Shields UK based Solar Solve Marine recently received a significant order from Samgong Co. Ltd., their World Wide Distributor based in Busan, South Korea. The requirement is to supply various quantities of their brand leading, Type Approved SOLASAFE® window blinds for boats for installation at the wheelhouse windows of 13 vessels currently under construction or scheduled for imminent construction in South Korean shipyards. Ten of the vessels are being built by Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering, which is a great indicator of the builder’s continued faith in Samgong Co. and Solar Solve Marine as dependable suppliers. One of the vessels that will be delivered with SOLASAFE® screens installed, is the 320,000dwt VLCC oil tanker LONDON VOYAGER which is currently being built for Maran Tankers Management (MTM).
When the window blinds for boats are in use on a vessel they will protect personnel on the navigation bridge from the sun’s glare as well as its infra-red and ultra-violet radiation, creating a more comfortable and safer working environment. The benefits are widely agreed by the end-users as being very significant.
John Lightfoot, MBE, Solar Solve Marine’s chairman commented, “For the last 2 years, orders from South Korea have been down to as low as 20% of their peak in 2011. Fortunately, Samgong is well respected by all of the major shipbuilders in Korea as a professionally run first class manufacturer and supplier of all types of marine equipment.”
“I first met the company founder and Chairman, H R Zong, 26 years ago during a trade mission to Korea organised by the DTI. Not long afterwards his company placed its first order with us and we have both enjoyed and benefited from a tremendously successful business relationship ever since.”
“If all of our customers were as perfect as Chairman Zong and his super team at Samgong Co. Ltd., life at Solar Solve would be even more wonderful than it already is. He is a perfect gentleman for whom I have the greatest respect and admiration. The fact that a huge enterprise like Samgong has survived the crippling downturn in shipbuilding in South Korea over the last 7 or 8 years is a tremendous tribute to his capabilities and expertise and those of his son J S Zong, President and CEO of the company, who is obviously very successfully following in his father’s footsteps.”
The team at Solar Solve are confident that this order, along with others from elsewhere that are on the increase, is a reliable indicator that the global marine industry is beginning to recover after so many years of decline.
