The first national standard on the technical specifications of plastic fishing vessels, set by Zhejiang Shengsi Yangshan Rotational Molding Technology Co, a plastic yacht manufacturer in Shengsi, Zhoushan city, Zhejiang province, has recently passed the expert review organized by the State Fishing Vessel Standardization Technical Committee, and is expected to be published and implemented soon. 

The standard, upon implementation, will help set quality standards for the licensing of plastic fishing vessels made in China.

China has been developing such vessels since 1989, but due to the lack of independent core technologies, the vessels China produced at this time didn't meet the sufficient standards. Therefore, the vessel producing industry in China went into decline. It didn't come out of it until the plastic yacht manufacturer in Shengsi successfully produced one in 2008 and the company has developed its own techniques and facilities over the past ten years of research.

Capable of producing 13-meter-long plastic vessels, the company is now ahead of its global counterparts, who can only produce plastic vessels less than 10 meters long. 

Promising as their future is, China's plastic vessels could not be previously licensed due to the lack of a national standard for testing their qualification.

In response to that, the state government appointed the Shengsi company to set a national standard on the technical specifications of plastic fishing vessels in 2017, which was in reference to the company's earlier standard on producing such vessels.

Plastic vessels, which are safer, more environmental-friendly and requires less maintenance than normal vessels made of wood or steel, are expected to be manufactured more and more in the future and thus have tremendous potential in the vessel market.