Mr Chang founded Yantai in 1994, specialising in the construction of various marine and offshore projects.

Yantai recently completed the construction of a large-scale gantry crane with the capacity for 20,000t loads at its yard in Shandong Province, China. Named Taisun, the crane is designed to aid the construction of offshore platforms. It carried out its first job in November 2008, lifting the 14,000t deckbox of COSL Drilling Europe AS’s semi-submersible drilling rig, COSL Pioneer. The deckbox was mated onto the columns and hull of the rig in one single operation.

“Under his leadership we created a solid infrastructure for our yard and substantially raised our production capacity through the new and upgraded facilities he spearheaded,” said Mr Chang.

“On behalf of the board, we would like to express our sincere gratitude to Yong Jin for his contributions to the [company] and we wish him every success in his future endeavours.”