At the massive Geoje shipyard in South Korea, Hanwha Ocean builds its next-generation naval vessels.SUPPLIED
In Geoje, an island city in South Korea, Hanwha Ocean is at the centre of one of the world’s great industrial manufacturing sites. The shipyard covers five square kilometres, and houses the world’s largest drydock, a 900-ton goliath crane and state-of-the-art factory facilities.
“Our Geoje shipyard is like the Grand Canyon. You can see pictures of it, but until you see it with your own eyes you don’t understand the scale and scope of it,” says Steve Jeong, retired Korean Navy Admiral, and senior executive vice president and head of Naval Ship Global Business for Hanwha Ocean.
Hanwha Ocean has evolved from a commercial shipbuilder into one of the world’s largest integrated defence and maritime engineering companies. The company employs more than 31,000 people and operates under the parent Hanwha Group, which has more than 100,000 employees and over 90 global affiliates.
That industrial strength supports Hanwha’s growing global role, from Asia to Europe. Now, the company has its sights set on Canada.
Hanwha Ocean is one of two contenders for the Canadian Patrol Submarine Project (CPSP), a multi-billion-dollar program tasked with replacing the Royal Canadian Navy’s aging Victoria Class fleet.
The outcome of the CPSP competition will determine more than the future of Canada’s submarine fleet. It could also bring new opportunities for Canadian industry in defence, as well as other areas including space, energy, critical minerals, advanced manufacturing, and even forestry and agriculture.
“We see Canada’s strategic and economic interests increasingly linked to the Indo-Pacific. Trade routes, security architectures and technology partnerships all connect,” says Mr. Jeong. For Canada, deeper ties in the Indo-Pacific can deliver diversified supply chains, robust defence partnerships and access to advanced industrial ecosystems, not to mention a massive market.
Over the past three decades, Hanwha Ocean has built more than 120 naval vessels, including 23 submarines and 55 surface ships. The KSS-III submarine, launched in 2018 and currently active with the Republic of Korea (ROK) Navy, is Hanwha Ocean’s proposed design for Canada’s new fleet. It has been proven under real-world conditions and offers the longest submerged endurance among conventional submarines in service, exceeding 7,000 nautical miles.
Currently, the shipyard can build five naval vessels at a time and is on track to expand capacity to eight simultaneous builds by 2028. Hanwha Ocean delivers full life-cycle capability, from design and production to long-term support, and has formal integration with Hanwha Aerospace and Hanwha Systems. “We share engineering standards, digital modelling tools, and a common test and integration framework. So subsystems integrate smoothly on the platform,” says Mr. Jeong.
That integration reduces technical risk and shortens timelines because subsystems are developed to common specifications and integrated earlier.
The company’s evolution has been driven by three things, says Mr. Jeong: sustained investment in R&D, purposeful moves up the value chain into defence platforms and embedded systems, and integration with the broader Hanwha industrial ecosystem.
“Each of these moments reinforced our shift from builder to system integrator and global partner,” says Mr. Jeong.
Being part of Hanwha Group gives Hanwha Ocean the financial strength and industrial capacity to take on projects at any scale.
“We’re not just a hull builder. Structurally, we operate as a centre of excellence with dedicated business units for design, systems engineering, production and sustainment. But we deliberately embed cross-functional teams for project delivery.”
Mr. Jeong notes that the KSS-III not only fully meets but exceeds all mandatory requirements set out by the Canadian government for CPSP. That includes stealth and endurance across the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic oceans.
Hanwha Ocean states that it can deliver four submarines to replace the Victoria Class fleet by 2035 if contracted next year, and complete a 12-vessel fleet by 2043. They say earlier retirement of the Victoria Class fleet will result in estimated savings of approximately $1-billion in maintenance and support costs.
“Our success has come from combining industrial scale with engineering depth, investing ahead of demand and building trusted partnerships,” says Mr. Jeong. “Those same attributes will define the future. Hanwha has an objective of being recognized as a top-five defence company globally. We’ll apply our scale to accelerate innovation, our engineering depth to integrate complex systems, and our partnership mindset to deliver sovereign, interoperable capability for allied navies and industries.”
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