Reuters reported that Finland's Wartsila, one of the world's largest ship engine makers, is seeing some signals of recovery in specialist areas, and is sticking to its forecasts for 2010.

Mr Ole Johansson CEO of Wartsila said that "Towards the very end of last year and the first two months of this year, we have seen some cruise ships, research vessels, oil rigs being ordered. Time will tell how quickly they will work into orders for us."

He said that these specialist sectors would recover ahead of merchant shipbuilding, and that it would take at least a couple of years for overcapacity in the container shipping market to be absorbed.

Mr Johansson said that he still stood by the group's 2010 forecast for net sales to fall by between 10% and 20% and for an underlying operating margin of 9% to 10%.

Wartsila, which claims to have equipment on one in every three ships in the world, has earlier signed a deal with Raytheon to include navigation systems on its products for ship bridges, or dashboards.

Mr Johansson said that Wartsila was looking to expand its ship equipment offering and would do so either via partnerships such as the Raytheon one, or with small acquisitions. He added that "Stepping up the know how within the company is crucial. We have sufficient financial strength to make acquisition decisions when appropriate."

(Sourced from www.reuters.com)