More German yards join forces

In the country’s latest major shipbuilding reshuffle, German Dry Docks (GDD) and BREDO Dockgesellschaft in Bremerhaven and the Mützelfeldtwerft in Cuxhaven said that on 1 February they will form an alliance of independent yards “linking the Weser and the Elbe.”

GDD MD Guido Försterling told The Motorship: “The repair and conversion sector is a market of cut-throat competition – we need to pool our strengths accordingly.”

He added: “The main target is to sustainably secure and strengthen Bremerhaven and Cuxhaven as ship repair locations. By bundling and concentrating our activities we hope to increase synergies, flexibility and the exploitation of existing capacities,” he said.

Together those capacities are formidable. GDD operates five docks in Bremerhaven’s Kaiserhafen while BREDO has four in the port’s Fischereihafen. Mützelfeldtwerft operates a single dock in Cuxhaven’s Amerikahafen on the Elbe.

The new alliance will utilise cross-yard dock planning and be “under the umbrella of” GDD, the biggest of the three yards, with GDD’ s Försterling and BREDO MD, Dirk Harms, as joint managers.

Harms said: “Each yard had to reject orders in the past when its own docks were occupied.” The alliance meant “higher dock capacity and direct reaction to fluctuating workloads,” he added.

The three yards will remain independent partners and continue to trade under their own names, Försterling said. “We cannot say at the moment whether this might change in coming years. … Given the current situation there are no grounds for amalgamation.”

Inside around a year, shipyard reshuffles have changed the shipbuilding landscape on the German coast, along with German shipbuilding prospects.

The most recent change, also linking Weser and Elbe, has been the acquisition in 2016 of Blohm + Voss by Lürssen. Earlier in the year three big east German yards became part of the new Genting-owned MW Werften in Wismar.