A TANKER is under construction in a dry dock at Hyundai Heavy Industries Co.’s shipyard in Ulsan, South Korea, on Wednesday. South Korea’s industrial production rose for a fourth month in July as companies increased output to meet rising overseas demand for semiconductors and mobile phones. BLOOMBERG

HANJIN Heavy Industries & Construction Co., the first South Korean company to export vessels, said it will spend 449.2 billion won ($480 million) to build a second dock at its yard in the Philippines.

The dock, to be built at a former US naval base in Subic Bay, west of Manila, is expected to be completed by March 2009, the Busan-based company said in a regulatory filing today.

Shipyards in South Korea including Samsung Heavy Industries Co. and STX Shipbuilding Co. are expanding overseas to increase production as global economic growth raises the need for more vessels.

About 90 percent of trade worldwide is carried by sea.

Hanjin Heavy started building vessels at the Subic yard in March. It has a backlog to build 36 ships, valued at $3.6 billion, to be delivered by 2011.

Shares of Hanjin Heavy dropped 0.7 percent to 71,500 won as of 11:07 a.m. in Seoul.

The stock has fallen 19 percent since it started trading on September 3, when it was spun off from Hanjin Heavy Industries & Construction Holdings Co. (Bloomberg)

Petrolift says fourth vessel to arrive next month

PETROLIFT Inc., an oil and gas-tanker operator whose clients include the country’s largest petroleum firms, will have its fourth double-hull vessel early December.

A GROUP of shippers in Mindanao has requested shipping firms to deploy its much larger vessel going to and from the southern part of the Philippines in order to effect an economy of scale that will reduce shipping rates in the long run.

HANJIN Heavy Industries & Construction Co., the first South Korean company to export vessels, said it will spend 449.2 billion won ($480 million) to build a second dock at its yard in the Philippines.

COSCO Pacific Ltd., Asia’s third-largest container-terminal operator, agreed to sell sea-cargo boxes to Austria’s SLI Dritte Verwaltungsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG for $194.7 million to fund other investments.