“KITANIHON” means ‘North Japan’, reflecting our yard’s location at Hachinohe City on the Pacific coast of Northern Japan.

KITANIHON was established in 1969 by a local steel industry group with the support of the Hachinohe City where assigned as a “New Industrial City” from Government in 1967. The founders’ vision was to establish a center of regional excellence in steel shipbuilding and repair dock yard.

Initially KITANIHON concentrated on the construction of fishing ships and it’s repair service work, however a decline in Japanese demands for fishing ships in the 1970s resulted in a switch to the construction of ships for international trading.

Since then KITANIHON has developed and established as a shipbuilder of HIGH SPECIFICATION SHIPS including Chemical Tankers, Refrigerated Cargo Carriers, Oil Tankers, Liquefied Gas Carriers, Roll-on Roll-off Cargo Ships, Multi-purpose Ships, Pure Car Carriers and other types.

Besides, KITANIHON has been managed in parallel with expansion and investment in facilities after more than 35 years, and KITANIHON has grown the shipyard possible to build oceangoing ships exceeding 30,000 tons deadweight in spite of the first ship built by the yard was a domestic ship of just 53 gross tons.

Recently, KITANIHON has established brand new “Block Works”, “Paint Works” and “Piping and Outfitting Works” close to the main yard to support the new ship production capacity. At the same time KITANIHON converted its repair dock into a dry dock for newbuilding and will expand its business by establishing a parallel newbuild system utilizing both new building “the slipway” and “the drydock”. By this restructuring, KITANIHON had been ready to go ahead with demand augmentation of the world.

By using long-accumulated experience and study in design, technology and quality control and so on, KITANIHON has been providing various types of ships and working in partnership with our clients both domestic and overseas to further develop our product range ongoingly.