Concentración sectorial

SECTORAL CONCENTRATION.

Introduction

The ancillary sector is mainly comprised of the following three types of companies:

1.   Suppliers of capital goods
2.   Integrators: big companies that carry out works related to fitting out, electrical installation, insulation, etc.
3.   SMEs that provide services to shipyards

This last company segment is where the smallest but most labour intensive companies lie. They are currently in an inferior situation from a competitive point of view and this negatively impacts on the general competitiveness of the sector.

Furthermore, the small size of companies is amongst the main causes of financing problems that the sector is currently experiencing, when we look at their turnover, staff numbers, means of production and presence in the several geographic markets, which in turn greatly reduces their negotiation capacity.

The above mentioned small size prevents these companies from accessing scale economies for all types of resources at reasonable cost. On the subject of resources, we are mainly referring to:

-   Financing
-   Qualified human resources
-   Technological means and innovation
-   Knowledge
-   Etc.

Objectives

With the above mentioned in mind, there arises a need for designing and promoting projects that foster concentrations of businesses by considering adequate ways such as the following:

-   Strategic long-term alliances and agreements.
-   Joint ventures (temporary unions of companies, collaborations…).
-   Takeovers.
-   Mergers.
-   Creation of joint structures for acquiring resources.
-   Creation of new business associations or clusters with a greater geographic influence.
-   Signing of protocols of cooperation with technological centres for factoring joint services.
-   Etc.

In short, it is aimed to provide the naval ancillary sector companies with:

on the one hand, the advantages provided by the processes of cooperation to obtain scale economies that would help them to improve their costs, their innovation capacities and to access international markets.
on the other hand, a map of possible alternatives to formalize the above mentioned collaborations, by outlining the advantages and disadvantages of each of the existing formulae.

Work towards showing the advantages of collaboration to grow in size will be carried out through the identification of successful cases of businesses in the Atlantic Area countries where the naval ancillary industry has a relevant presence.

Actions

Within this activity the following actions are considered:

• Writing a study for the diagnosis of the possibilities of concentration for the ancillary industry: this action aims at studying the possible ways of cooperation among the ancillary industry to have more weight and a greater competitiveness.

• Plan of meetings with companies: aimed at disseminating the study and at identifying companies interested in processes of concentration.

Documents

Documents related to this activity will be available in this section after its execution.