Arminius shipyard

Arminius shipyard
legal form	GmbH
founding	1902
resolution	2000
Seat	Bodenwerder
Branch	shipbuilding

The Arminiuswerft GmbH , later Arminius-Werke GmbH , was a shipyard in Bodenwerder / Weser .

history

In 1902 the shipyard was founded in Bodenwerder as the C. Pape company. After building a makeshift slipway , Weser ships were repaired and chairs were also made. In 1930 the company was renamed Arminius shipyard. In 1934 the first new steel inland and seagoing ships were built. A wide variety of special ships, from dredgers to larger series of cargo ships, left the shipyard. During the Second World War the shipyard also employed forced laborers, including 120 Ukrainians and Italian military internees. In cooperation with the Demag plant Harkort II, segments for submarine construction were produced. After the end of the Second World War in 1945, the shipyard quickly developed into one of the leading companies in the construction of state-of-the-art inland and seagoing vessels through targeted investments and expansion of the design office. By 1962, 320 newbuildings with a load capacity of up to 1500 t had been delivered. At that time there were six slipways and the Arminius shipyard had around 300 employees. A repair shop with a slipway for three ships was set up on the Mittelland Canal in Hanover. This branch existed until 1987.

In December 1988, Arminiuswerft GmbH, part of the German VEBA group, was closed. In spring 1989, new shareholders decided to continue the shipyard and founded the company Arminius-Werke GmbH. As the demand for inland waterway vessels became smaller and smaller, the company specialized in the construction of coasters, most of which were built for a Russian shipping company . A joint venture with a Russian shipyard was also started.

Since the ships and the draft became bigger and bigger and the lock in Hameln became the bottleneck, the shareholders decided in 1996 to stop the shipbuilding in Bodenwerder and to relocate it to the Cassens shipyard in Emden .

In 1997 the Schiffswerft Bodenwerder GmbH was founded. The fleet of the Oberweserdampfschiffahrts-Gesellschaft was modernized with around 20 employees. In addition to a new central nave with a simultaneous widening for a barge, various pontoons , jetties and barges were built. The company was closed again in 2000 due to a lack of orders.

Today the company ARMINIUS Metallbau & Industrieservice GmbH is located on the site. 15 employees work in metal and steel construction and in industrial services. Smaller repairs are also being carried out on ships that are still in the Upper Weser area. The company is managed by Dirk Pfaff, who learned to be a shipbuilder at the shipyard in 1981.