After the crisis, the market turned to vessels that support ship maneuvers, called tugboats, in addition to investing in repairs in the naval sector

Shipbuilding has seen its production and number of employees decrease by 60% in the last 3 years. Today this sector is starting to show a recovery in business in Santa Catarina, in 2014 the shipyards of Navegantes and Itajaí had about 10 thousand direct and indirect workers and are currently changing the point of view of production and starting to hire again.

Support vessels for oil platforms in the pre-salt area were the strong point of production in this sector, but in recent years 75% of workers have been fired, due to the crisis at Petrobras and the drop in oil prices. Unfortunately, this cascading effect reached most of the 74 companies in the sector on the north coast of Santa Catarina, which in order to survive were forced to venture into new seas.

According to Juliano de Freitas, financial director of Detroit Brasil, this situation is a natural cycle after a period of construction, ship repair, docking of vessels, when it is taken out of the water to carry out periodic safety and maintenance checks. This is the market they are exploring and it has represented an important part of the work and revenue at the shipyard.

Investing not only in repairs, the market turned to vessels that support naval maneuvers, known as tugboats. This month, one of the shipyards in the state awarded the seventh tugboat to a multinational, in a contract worth 220 million reais.

We cannot say with complete certainty that this sea has returned to fish, but the sector's expectation is that the market will only feel the effects of this recovery in two years' time. The numbers are still not positive this year, as around 600 employees were dismissed in shipbuilding in Itajaí and Navegantes, according to information from the union that represents them.

The resumption of business in the naval sector also depends on the auctions of exploration fields that are yet to take place, informs Leonardo Campos Freitas, executive advisor of the Naval Construction Union. He also stated that the more auctions the ANP (National Petroleum Agency) holds, the more companies will be interested in addition to Petrobras itself, which could generate more jobs for the sector.

Oceaneering starts the week with offshore, onshore and administrative vacancies