After the glory of the sixties and seventies and the depression of the eighties, the shipbuilding industry has entered a period of gradual recovery and activity. In the face of fierce competition in the domestic and foreign markets, China's shipbuilding industry has developed rapidly, and its shipbuilding capacity ranks third in the world after Japan and South Korea, with an annual shipbuilding capacity of 3,003,500,000 tons and nearly one million tons of shipbuilding steel plates. After several years of hard work, the domestic shipbuilding steel plate can be produced from a few in the past to almost all medium and heavy plate manufacturers; from the past only a single variety and specification of general strength ship plate to a large number of varieties and specifications of general and high strength ship plate; from less than 30 percent in 1992 to 80 percent in 1999. It can be said that the development of the shipbuilding industry has directly guided and promoted the technological progress of shipbuilding steel plate production, and at the same time, China's plate industry has provided a reliable guarantee for the shipbuilding industry to move towards the international market and participate in international competition.
As a special steel, shipbuilding steel plate has high requirements for variety, quality, delivery time, etc. Although most domestic manufacturers can produce, only a few manufacturers have formed a certain production scale. From the perspective of the output ratio of shipboard of each manufacturer, several backbone manufacturers have concentrated on the production of shipbuilding plates with high technical content and added value, and in fact, shipboard has become the leading product of Pugang Heavy Plate Factory, Heavy Steel No. 5 Factory and other manufacturers.
