A big jump in profitability has given a boost to the STX Europe shipbuilding group.

Second quarter pretax profit ran to NOK 407m ($76.1m) compared to just NOK 98m through the same period of 2010.

Pretax profit for the half year was NOK 742m compared to a loss of NOK 53m in the first six months of 2010.

After tax the profit dropped to NOK 326m and NOK 562m respectively.

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