SPECIAL FEATURE
Shipbuilding & Ship Repair

Cityvarvet in Göteborg. Photo: Lasse Vourio

In addition to looking at the large shipyards in Northern Europe, we will this year also take a closer look at the Swedish shipyards in our annual Shipbuilding and Ship Repair issue. Although not being one of the large shipbuilding nations, Sweden has several successful shipyards in interesting niches.

The Liberty of the Seas was on sea trials in December 2006 and is due for delivery in spring 2007. Photo: Pär-Henrik Sjöström

The Formula One class
within shipbuilding
The market situation is extremely good for shipyards building passenger vessels. If the market continues to grow, Aker Yards might have to increase their capacity to build cruise vessels. The order backlog for large cruise vessels is all time high with deliveries until year 2012.

Denmark:
Steady flow for Danish yards
The Danish ship repair scene has not changed much in the past twelve months. Most significant is the inauguration of a new facility at Søby on the Isle of Ærø.

New jobs with the new
dry dock at Søby
Søby Værft A/S can now look back at the first couple of months with a large dry dock at the port of Søby on the Isle of Ærø. The readying of the dock took six months longer than stipulated in the contract.

Estonia:
BLRT: current market
situation favourable
Fjodor Berman, chairman of the management board of the BLRT Group, is in an optimistic frame of mind.

SRC: We are paid for quality
Two half-finished tankers are moored at SRC, Ship Repair & Conversion, in Paljassaare harbour in Tallinn. Once the work is finished on them, two more will take their place.

LTH-Baas: Big expansion plans
“Our Director of Marketing is in negotiations in France, we’re exhibiting at a trade fair in Miami, we’re having to bring our workers back from Spain and we’re working on a national tender in Sweden,” says Aleksandr Maljugin, director of LTH-Baas.

Finland:
Exceptional order intake
at Finnish shipyards
After an exceptional order intake during 2005 and the beginning of 2006, Aker Yards’ Finnish shipyards are now fully booked until the end of 2008.

Uki Workboat had a busy 2006
Uki Workboat in Uusikaupunki had a busy year in 2006. The largest project was an extensive refit of the Finnish Border Guard patrol vessel Uisko, which was completed in September.

Germany:
Shipbuilding never had it so good
German shipbuilding never had it so good with lean yards still churning out more newbuildings than ever before and orders defying earlier predictions that the inevitable downturn was just around the corner.

Ship repair enjoys
wide pallet of work
There has been a good mix of passenger and cargo ship repair and conversion in German yards of late, inland as well as in the usual larger coastal facilities.

Latvia:
Riga Shipyard: 2008 portfolio
is filling up
Ships are already being built at the Riga Shipyard on two slips. The large well boat, with the volume of its three holds at 2,000 m3, is an order from Norway. A Danish customer is expecting a trawler that is 63 metres long.

Tosmare Shipyard:
no expansion plans
The Tosmare Shipyard has reached its optimal performance level and strives to remain in its niche, focusing more on quality than on volume. 56 ships were repaired last year and 5–6 catamarans, up to 30 metres long, are built for Norwegian customers every year.

Baltija puts a lot of effort into keeping their experienced welders. Photo: Baltija Shipbuilding Yard

Baltija: Caring about the staff
The Baltija Shipbuilding Yard had expected a loss for the previous year but managed to avoid it due to additional orders. The labour force fluidity is forcing the enterprise to seek ways of better ensuring that its workers choose not to leave.

Western Shipyard:
Clients like our style of work
Just like its BLRT Group parent company, the Western Shipyard in Klaipeda is comprised of several subsidiaries. The amount of work is not something to complain about but labour force shortage is a problem here, too.

Norway:
2006 – a blissful bonanza
for Norwegian shipbuilding
The year of 2006 will surely be remembered for a very long time as the blissful bonanza for shipbuilding in Norway. Production was up to capacity, new orders and order backlog exceeded any historical precedent at prices that should again leave a decent margin for profit. Most yards are now fully booked into 2009, and contracts are being negotiated for delivery positions well into 2011.

Poland:
Sentenced to cut down
on capacity
When writing about Polish newbuilding shipyards today, one cannot help but get the impression that it does not really matter what they produce, who they make it for, and how much it costs. Whether or not they produce anything next year, who they belong to and what the price of their second denationalization will be, seem to be questions of far greater importance.

Russia:
Changes continue
in Russian shipbuilding
In February Russia’s Minister of Industry and Energy, Viktor Khristenko, presented the Russian Duma with the Government’s intentions to introduce new legislation “to prevent Russian shipbuilding from falling behind Western competitors”, citing the Russian daily Kommersant.

Sweden:

Ö-varvet in the archipelago of Göteborg is controlled by the fourth generation of the Backman family. Photo: Öckerö Hamn

Shipbuilding and ship repair
along the long Swedish coast
Along the coast of Sweden and in the largest lake, Vänern, several shipyards are rebuilding, repairing, renovating and building new ships for domestic use as well as for foreign shipowners and administrations. Many of the yards are small and family owned and quite a few of the latter have been in the family for generations. The present owners have not only inherited the skill and tradition of shipbuilding and repair but have also developed and renewed the enterprise to meet the demands of today and tomorrow. They will continue to be in the forefront when it comes to new techniques and environmentally friendly ships and equipment.

Positive trend at Falkvarv
Falkvarv is strategically well situated on the west coast of Sweden between Göteborg, the largest port in the country, and the fast growing Öresund region.

Öresundsvarvet will increase their resources for the future
Like the previous years, 2006 was a successful year for Öresundsvarvet with many interesting projects. Four of TT Line’s ferries were dry-docked and one of them, the Nils Holgersson, changed the starboard pod, with a weight of 110 tonnes.

A rare photo showing all five Corvettes in the Visby series at the same time at the yard in Karlskrona. In the background is the 240 metres long production plant. Photo: Peter Nilsson

Kockums – building
invisible vessels
Today the Karlskronavarvet, which was founded as early as in 1679, is named Kockums and has for a couple of years been owned by ThyssenKrupp Marine System in Germany. All production is concentrated to Karlskrona and the work of the Technology Department is focused primarily on surface ships and mine-clearance concepts. The company has a unique high-tech expertise and is specialised in stealth technology.

Landskronavarvet –
with capacity for large ships
Landskronavarvet, formerly Bruces Shipyard, is next-door neighbour to Öresundsvarvet in Landskrona. Due to a tremendous drop in the newbuilding market in 2002, the yard went bankrupt. The production recommenced in the spring of 2006, when the building of a supply ship for the Norwegian Company Voldstad began.

Götaverken Cityvarvet –
a growing repair yard
Götaverken Cityvarvet has a long and interesting history and was founded in 1841. A lot of well known ships have been built and repaired at the yard that played a major role during the heydays of Swedish shipbuilding.