CHINA'S offshore yards have diversified their product lines to include projects unrelated to oil and gas - including fish farms, cruise ships, offshore wind farms and civil vessels - in order to survive the current market downturn. Yards hungry for offshore work are hoping such projects can tide them over during a time of challenging market conditions and a scarcity of new oil and gas offshore projects. Rig construction has helped the yards build up strong steel-structure fabrication experience, and each yard has used it to carve out new product lines in their respective diversification drives. CIMC Raffles, for example - no long resting on the laurels of having built a few sixth-generation deepwater semi-submersible drilling rigs - has refocused part of its business on building fish farms. The yard in eastern China's Shandong province has developed a number of aquaculture cages for use under different sea conditions.
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