The Middle East is facing an overcapacity in ship repair yards according to a senior executive in the region.

“Is there overcapacity in the Gulf? In my opinion yes there is, definitely,” Geoffrey Taylor, md - marine engineering, Topaz Marine Engineering told delegates at Seatrade Middle East Maritime.

“I’ve seen ship repair business from both sides - being in a very large shipyard, to working in in a medium sized operation as I do now. When I was in Dubai Drydocks, our main competitor regionally would have been ASRY and subsequent to that we have a large ship repair facility open in Qatar, we have a large ship repair facility opened up in Duqm in Oman.“

The panel in the session agreed that the Middle East ship repair industry benefits from its location on world trade routes, but trends such as the increasing average size of vessels in many sectors limits demand growth.

“I think its quite clear that the occupancy level in all those yards is frustrating. Because the amount of vessels coming into the region hasn’t increased significantly, the same number of vessels are being diluted across two more yards. Some of those yards in fact have expansion plans, building floating docks and the like, which only increases capacity.”