Lindenau rallies with full repair docks

However, in exclusive comments to The Motorship, managing director Dieter Kühne also said that “winning orders in both the repair and the newbuilding sectors will remain difficult” and that “the situation will not improve during 2012”.

Kühne reported repair work this month on the buoy layer Bussard, the tug Kitzeberg and the motor ships Baltic Skipper and Sleipner. He said the yard had previously also repaired general cargo and other vessels including Kovera, the tug Monsun, Warnow Vaquita, Arabian Breeze andthe accident-damaged Alteland.

“More tenders and enquiries are being processed so we expect the repair workload to stay at a good level in the immediate future” he said.

Kühne told The Motorship that Lindenau, long Germany’s leading developer and builder of modern tankers but insolvent since 2008, was “increasingly developing into a repair location”. Last November he said repair and maintenance was “an increasingly important mainstay” at the yard as newbuilding sagged in the face of Asian price competition.

Despite the currently positive repair situation, Kühne also said in his latest comments that “the economic situation in the yards and the tense atmosphere on the financial markets are not likely to improve trust in economic recovery. As a result everyone is holding back”, he said.

Future newbuilding prospects were also mixed, he declared. “Once again we are seeing partially speculative newbuildings ordered in the past now being delivered onto a market which is stagnating or declining. Supply is clearly exceeding demand. Ships are again being laid up and charter rates are under considerable pressure and have dropped considerably in recent months”, Kühne declared.

Finally, he noted that continuing expansion of yard capacities in Asia and increasingly in South America was “leading to a significant rise in shipbuilding capacities and will further speed up price decline. What chances there are continue to lie in repair, maintenance and diversification” he said.

Kühne’s latest comments to The Motorship came just days after Lindenau undocked the sailship Gorch Fock. She left after a three month stay without being repaired as scheduled. Lindenau had hoped for the €1m job but authorities decided to give it to another German yard.