Shipmaker puts shipyard up for sale

China State Shipbuilding Corp (CSSC), the country's largest ship-building group, has put its Wenchong Shipyard up for sale on the Beijing Equity Exchange for 3.04 billion yuan ($443 million), according to Tootoo.com reports.

The official China Securities Journal quoted analysts as saying that Guangzhou Shipyard International Co, a Shanghai-listed subsidiary of CSSC, was the most likely buyer for the shipyard, one of CSSC's best unlisted assets.

Guangzhou Ship could not be immediately reached for comment.

Its shares rose 2.51 percent in morning trade to 25.70 yuan, compared with a 1 percent drop in Shanghai's benchmark index .SSEC.

CSSC stipulated that the buyer must be in the shipbuilding business, have earned more than 300 million yuan in net profit each year from 2005 to 2007, and have built ships with a total of at least 500,000 dead weight tonnes in fiscal year 2007, the exchange said.

The buyer would also have to be state-owned or state-controlled, with total assets of no less than 10 billion yuan at the end of 2007, it said.

Wenchong Shipyard is based in Guangzhou, in the Pearl River Delta near Hong Kong.