Szczecin shipyard

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Szczecin Shipyard (2007)
Main gate

The Szczecin shipyard was a shipbuilding company in Szczecin . The company, one of the largest European shipyards, has been in liquidation since May 2009 .

history

After the Second World War , Szczecin came to Poland. The traditional Szczecin shipyards were largely destroyed by bombing . After the consolidation of the remaining shipyards, the ZSPO Stocznia Szczecińska was founded in 1948 as a state-owned company on the former site of the Stettiner Oderwerke and the Vulcan shipyard . In April 1948, the Oliwa, the first new building for the Polish shipbuilding industry, was launched . The construction of the next ship, the Collier Czulym , did not begin until 1951. From 1951 the company traded as Stocznia Szczecińska , German: Stettiner Werft . From February 18, 1959 to 1990, the name of the shipyard was Stocznia Szczecińska im. Adolfa Warskiego after the Polish labor leader Adolf Warski . Since the "Odra- Helling " was only designed for the construction of relatively small ships, the "Vulcan-Helling" was built in 1957 with two slipways , of which the first ship ran in 1959.

In the following decades, ships were mainly built for the Soviet Union , but also for Germany, Great Britain and Norway . In 1990 the name of the shipyard was changed to Stocznia Szczecińska SA and after the political change in the early 1990s, the company fell into a serious crisis due to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the cancellation of state subsidies. By specializing in medium-sized container ships from 3000 to 4000 TEU and chemical tankers up to 50,000 tdw, the shipyard was able to be consolidated. The workforce was reduced from 11,000 to 7,000 employees. The shipyard, which still owed 116 million US dollars in mid-1992, was considered debt-free at the end of the year.

The "Odra Nowa" slipway built in 1994 was designed for the construction of hulls up to 40 meters wide . In 2000 the slipway "Wulkan II" was modernized, enlarged and equipped with a 72 meter high crane system with a load capacity of 450 tons. This enabled the construction of ships up to 256 meters in length and 100,000 tons of deadweight .

Based on the order volume of 1.6 billion US dollars, the Szczecin shipyard was in fifth place in the world in 1996 behind the largest South Korean and Japanese shipbuilding companies. The shipyard in Szczecin was considered a prime example of successful management. In 1999 the name of the company was changed again to Stocznia Szczecińska Porta Holding SA During this time, the number of orders for the construction of new ships worldwide decreased. In addition, there was a sharp drop in prices and an unfavorable exchange rate between the US dollar and the zloty . When it became known in November 2001 that a contractual penalty for the late delivery of a chemical tanker had been repaid by current loans, the banks stopped payments to the shipyard. The insolvency led to a halt in production in March and bankruptcy in July 2002.

The company was taken over by the State Agency for Industrial Development and continued production under the name of Stocznia Szczecińska Nowa Sp.zoo . Sales of $ 1.1 billion were achieved in 48 months with the construction of 30 ships. Attempts to privatize the shipyard or to restructure it independently of state aid failed. Since the Polish government under Prime Minister Jarosław Kaczyński failed to apply to the EU to extend the shipbuilding subsidy, the EU Commission declared the state payments to the Polish shipyards to be illegal in 2008. The government in Warsaw was asked to recover the aid illegally paid to the shipyards in Szczecin, Gdynia and Gdansk . The assets of the Szczecin shipyard, which last had around 4,500 employees, have been for sale since then. The potential buyer does not require the continued operation of the shipbuilding industry.

Web links

Commons : Szczecin Shipyard  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Samira Lazarovic: From the state enterprise to the theater stage. The sinking of a shipyard. In: fluter.de. Federal Agency for Civic Education, October 2002, archived from the original on March 4, 2016 ; Retrieved September 22, 2009 .
  2. ↑ Robert Kościelny, Artur Kubaj: Stocznia Szczecińska in. Adolfa Warskiego. In: Encyklopedii Solidarności. Retrieved in 2018 (Polish).
  3. ↑ a b c d O Stoczni. Stocznia Szczecińska Nowa, 2006, archived from the original on March 6, 2007 ; Retrieved September 22, 2009 .
  4. ↑ a b Five marks an hour . In: Der Spiegel . No. 13 , 1996, pp. 130 ( online ).
  5. ↑ State aid: Commission approves repayment and rehabilitation plans for shipyards in Gdynia and Szczecin. ( PDF ; 92 KB) November 6, 2008, accessed on September 22, 2009 .
  6. ↑ Brigitte Jaeger-Dabel: No salvation for Poland's shipyards? In: The Poland Magazine. August 20, 2009. Retrieved September 22, 2009 .

Coordinates: 53 ° 26 ′ 46.6 ″  N , 14 ° 34 ′ 50 ″  E