Wärtsilä Land & Sea Academy (WLSA) has taken another major step forward in the development of its training services by opening today a new training centre in Jisa, near Pusan in South Korea. The new training centre supports the growing use of Wärtsilä engines and propulsion equipment in ships built in Korea.
"The demand for training is steadily rising and the WLSA centre, with its world class facilities, is well located in Korea so that the training can be made hand-in-hand with newbuilding deliveries", said Tage Blomberg, Group Vice President, Services, Wärtsilä Corporation.
Korea is the world's largest shipbuilding country and also the largest manufacturing country of large diesel engines. Korean engine builders are leading manufacturers of Wärtsilä RT-flex low-speed engines under licence. Wärtsilä and Hyundai have formed a joint venture company named Wärtsilä Hyundai Engine Company Ltd to manufacture Wärtsilä 50DF dual-fuel medium speed engines to power large LNG carriers. Korean shipyards are taking more than 80% of the world market for LNG carriers.
The new WLSA centre is purpose-built to provide training primarily for Wärtsilä RT-flex low-speed engines and Wärtsilä 50DF medium-speed engines for customers' engineers, shipyard staff, the licensed manufacturers and classification society surveyors. The training centre is ideally positioned to provide training for customers' engineers coming to Korea to accept delivery of their new ships.
The WLSA centre has premises with a total enclosed area of 1700 m2, of which the workshops cover 1400 m2 and the offices and lecture rooms cover 300 m2. Initially the training centre will employ seven to eight persons. When fully operational early in 2008, the centre will be able to train some 500 to 600 people a year.
In addition to providing practical and theoretical training for Wärtsilä RT-flex, 50DF, Vasa 32 and 20 engine types, the WLSA centre includes workshops for mechanical work, non-destructive inspection and welding to upgrade engineers' practical skills.
The WLSA Korean training centre is one in a series of major training centres built for global coverage of training and competence management services in the marine and power plant industries. Others are located at Fort Lauderdale, Florida; Turku, Finland; Trieste, Italy; Winterthur, Switzerland; Gothenburg, Sweden; Zwolle and Drünen, The Netherlands; Khopoli, India; and Subic Bay in the Philippines.