'Island-maker' dredger will top Asia rankings

China has recently started building a new cutter-suction dredger that its designer called the biggest and best of its kind in Asia.

This type of dredger is known as an "island-maker" due to such ships' major role in land reclamation.

Construction of the new vessel, which has yet to be named, began in mid-May at Huangpu Wenchong Shipbuilding Co in Guangzhou, a subsidiary of the industry giant China State Shipbuilding Corp. It is expected to take about a year, according to Zhang Xiaofeng, the ship's chief designer at the Marine Design and Research Institute in Shanghai, one of CSSC's research arms.