Hyundai Heavy Industries Co., Ltd. (HHI), the world’s biggest shipbuilder, announced today that it developed an automatic spray head for painting the bottom parts of ships.

The automatic painting spray enables the paint to spread evenly across the surface saving 20% of the paint used compared with the manual painting method where painters have to bend their necks backwards and look up to paint the bottom of the ship.

HHI has already deployed 11 units of the spray head in its Ulsan shipyard and the company expects the patented automatic spray heads to save about KRW 70 million per unit in its painting process annually.

The paint spraying equipment is also expected to help prevent painters from getting work-related musculoskeletal disorders and enhance the painting performance of the less experienced workers.