Shanghai's ship exports top 40 billion yuan in first 7 months

Shanghai's ship exports totaled 40.09 billion yuan ($5.96 billion) in the first seven months of 2026, up 64.1 percent year-on-year, according to Shanghai Customs. High-end vessels, including liquid cargo vessels and large container ships, accounted for 83.9 percent of the total.

Major shipbuilders in Shanghai are operating at high capacity and have ample order backlogs, with production schedules at some companies extending through 2030.

As a major base for high-end shipbuilding and marine engineering equipment in China, Shanghai has developed a comprehensive industrial system spanning research and development, design, vessel construction, key components, and supply chain services.

In recent years, Shanghai Customs has optimized trade supervision and services to support the industry's digital and intelligent transformation and to help build an internationally competitive cluster of high-end shipbuilding and marine engineering equipment.

One example is the QC-Max ultra-large liquefied natural gas carrier under construction at Hudong-Zhonghua Shipbuilding (Group) Co Ltd, a major shipyard based in Shanghai. The vessel is the world's largest membrane-type LNG carrier in terms of tank capacity among those certified by an authoritative classification society.

Pudong Customs has helped the company streamline the registration and circulation of bonded materials, supporting more efficient construction. By the end of July, 126 items of bonded materials had been registered for the company.

The shipbuilder has also adopted digital processes for virtual pre-construction, comprehensive simulation, and verification, helping identify potential structural interference, process conflicts, assembly errors, and other risks before construction begins.

Compared with traditional construction methods, the approach has reduced the on-site rework rate by 40 percent, while the coverage of early-stage process risk screening has reached 98 percent.