Shin Kurushima Sanoyas Shipbuilding Co., Ltd. - Mizushima Shipyard

Shin Kurushima Sanoyas Shipbuilding builds ships at its Mizushima works in Kurashiki, Okayama, on the Seto Inland Sea. The business was founded in April 1911 as Sanoyasu Shipyard, took the Sanoyas name in 1984, and the present legal entity was established on 3 October 2011; in 2021 the company joined the Shin Kurushima Dockyard group and was renamed. Capital is 100 million yen. The Mizushima works opened in 1974 and all of the company's newbuilding is carried out there. Mizushima has a single large dock, divided by an intermediate gate into a building dock and a repair dock, with the gate settable in two positions to suit the size of ship. It takes 80,000 gross tons in either mode. With repair work running at the same time the dock builds in two stages; for newbuilding alone it builds in three. Four quays serve it, with up to 9 metres of water alongside and berths that moor vessels of up to 116,000 DWT. Lifting is by two 800 tonne Goliath cranes over the dock, a 300 tonne jib crane at the block yard, a 30 tonne hammerhead crane at the dock, level luffing cranes of 70, 20 and 5 tonnes on the quays, a 10 tonne portable jib and 38 overhead travelling cranes from 5 to 80 tonnes in the hull fabrication and assembly shops. The product line is bulk carriers and tankers. It runs from a 60,472 DWT Supramax with five holds and four cranes, kept under 200 metres in length and 13 metres in draught, through an 82,174 DWT Panamax fitted with the yard's own stern and rudder energy-saving devices, to a 104,939 DWT coal carrier and a 119,597 DWT Handy-Cape both developed with Mitsui O.S.K. Lines, a 64,538 DWT woodchip carrier of 4.35 million cubic feet, and a 115,482 DWT Aframax tanker built on a widened beam. Special vessels have included a self-propelled multipurpose vessel with a 500 tonne crane, dynamic positioning, four azimuth thrusters and 52 berths, a 2,820 gross ton ferry for 546 passengers delivered in December 2019, a concrete mixer barge and a barge unloader. More than a hundred Panamax bulkers and about fifty woodchip carriers have been completed. The Panamax bulkers Wellness Diva and AG Varvara were delivered in April and June 2026, and in March 2026 the yard obtained approval in principle for a socket-SPAR type liquefied carbon dioxide carrier design. Certification covers ISO 9001:2015, held jointly with the Osaka works and the gas tank sales department, the Mizushima scope running to the design, development and manufacture of merchant ships, marine gas tanks and fuel supply systems, and ISO 14001:2015 for Mizushima alone, alongside a carbon-neutral partnership agreement with Kurashiki City. The company's other site, the Osaka works at Minami-Tsumori in Nishinari-ku, is a repair yard with two dry docks and a mooring quay, working in ship repair and conversion, high-speed engine overhaul, liquefied gas cargo tanks and newbuilding blocks.