LUNGTEH

The art of ship-building today is riddled with several challenges, requiring a hull-to-helm understanding of the vessels. Many shipbuilding companies resort to subcontracting or outsourcing certain services to third-party suppliers to overcome these hurdles. In this process, the manufacturers often fail to meet the customized needs of clients and overlook meticulous attention to detail. Eventually, such alienation from their craftsmanship prevents shipbuilding companies from catering flexibility and responsiveness to the client’s immediate problems.

Observing the impending need for custombuilt vessels, LUNGTEH Shipbuilding Co. Ltd., a private company in Yilan, was founded in 1979 by Sheldon Huang in northern Taiwan to offer both shipbuilding technology and the art of providing the exceptional service that every vessel and its owner deserve. The company’s journey began by converting the Taiwanese fishery fleet from wooden hull to composite material (FRP) structures in the 1980s. It then continued into manufacturing high-performance patrol vessels and special service workboats, which became the stepping stone for LUNGTEH to showcase one of the finest craftsmanship in Taiwan’s shipbuilding industry.

The enterprise has proven adept by delivering over 110 patrol vessels to the Taiwan Coast Guard, more than 30 vessels to Singapore law enforcement agencies, and over 20 vessels to Hong Kong and Macau law enforcement agencies.

Now, with over 40 years of in-house design experience and over 100 designs delivered worldwide, LUNGTEH takes the onus to deliver tailor-made designs that match clients’ requirements. The company’s small-scale shipyard with 550+ lifetime employees successfully covers the whole spectrum of vessel design, building, and after-sales services. With a team of experts, they even accompany the client through the entire life service of the vessel. “More than just vessel manufacturing, LUNGTEH is a lifelong partner that provides each user with the diverse vessels they need. We offer a comprehensive solution to our clients through the processes of vessel procurement, manufacturing, and maintenance,” mentions Sheldon Huang, the founder of LUNGTEH.

The company’s expertise lies in designing and producing high-performance vessels for defence, law enforcement, fire & rescue, and other professional operators.

It produces medium and high-speed, light-ship weight vessels customized to meet each client’s specific requirements.One of LUNGTEH’s most significant naval projects is the 60+m wave-piercing catamaran missile corvette for the Taiwan Navy.

Simultaneously, LUNGTEH successfully built and delivered four Fast Mine Laying Boats to the Taiwan Navy with indigenous automatic mine-laying systems integrated on the vessel deck for optimized mine laying operations. Besides the defence and security market, LUNGTEH’s overarching presence is eminent in other specialized vessel markets, including ferry, harbour and offshore operations, with over 20 pilot vessels and 20 passenger ferries delivered to different clients in Japan, Singapore, Kenya and Taiwan. The company has also delivered 6 SWATH and Semi-SWATH Crew Transfer Vessels to support offshore wind farm development in the UK and Taiwan. Another major game-changer is LUNGTEH’s MPAC series of high-speed naval assault vessels for maritime patrol, interdiction, and assault. The key advantage of LUNGTEH’s MPAC vessels over its competitors is its operational capabilities in the open sea, marked by unmatched seakeeping, smooth and stable acceleration, superior course stability and manoeuvrability at all speeds even.

LUNGTEH’s constant endeavour to offer the best technological solutions to various challenges the modern marine industry faces is quite commendable. Due to the fast-evolving operational environment in the shipbuilding industry, modern vessels need seamless adaptability. To meet such exigencies, LUNGTEH can integrate modular interfaces and extra spare capabilities into vessel design to allow the clients to swap equipment depending on their mission and add new equipment to keep up with the operational trends. LUNGTEH has also evolved to provide one-stop unmanned vessel designing and building solutions. The organization is actively developing unmanned vessels and aims to provide clients with higher vessel availability to reduce risks and costs associated with onboarding crews.

A success story that highlights LUNGTEH’s excellence in the marine industry is redesigning two small Unmanned Surface Vessels for use in reconnaissance. The client had built similar boats in other shipyards, but the performance was unsatisfactory. It exhibited failed maximum speed, poor acceleration ability in the low and medium speed domain, and very limited seakeeping characteristics. LUNGTEH, using the same propulsion powertrain but with more deadweight, handed over the new USV with 5kt higher than the original speed requirement, linear acceleration performance in the hump-speed region and good operating performance even on rough seas. As a visionary, LUNGTEH has been working on digitalization by building a digital hub to bring data from different departments together. Digital hubs in conjunction with mobile development have allowed LUNGTEH to distribute knowledge and information more effectively throughout the organization. The company has also been promoting knowledge management in a few departments to help the company retain, learn, and share knowledge.

This digitalization has helped amplify its capabilities and allowed the team to scale better when meeting customer demands. LUNGTEH’s uncompromised high-performance vessels designed by leading naval architects and backed by Product Lifetime Management through Digital Twin and Digital Thread have proven to be the best choice to sail through even the most unruly seas.