Throw De Noord
Werf “De Noord” NV , also known as “de Nieuwe werf” , was a shipyard in the Dutch town of Alblasserdam , which existed from 1903 to 1962. Thereafter, the operation continued until 2003 as part of the shipbuilding company Van der Giessen-De Noord .
history
Beginnings
The shipyard goes back to Jan Ullrich Smit, who retired from his father's business in 1903 and bought a 5.4 hectare site in Hoogendijk, in the Ruigenhil polder, from Cornelis Vroege. The hydraulic engineering company Visser & Smit from Papendrecht washed up the site and built 3 slipways and a 130 by 50 meter shipyard. On July 4, 1904, the company was registered as Scheepsbouwwerf "De Noord" on Jan Ullrich Smit with the partners Cornelis Smit and Hendrik Jan Smit. The first ship built was the Eben Haëzer . Jan Ullrich Smit was later one of the co-founders of the Alblasserdam drinking water company and a company for the production of acetylene and oxygen.
The world wars
Up until the First World War, Werf de Noord supplied smaller seagoing vessels for mostly foreign accounts. The proportion of foreign orders, especially from Scandinavia, increased again during the war years. In the course of the war, however, it became increasingly difficult to carry out the orders due to the effects of the war, such as material shortages. After the end of the war, around a quarter of world trade tonnage was lost and the shipyard's order books were full. In order to participate in this high demand, the shipyard enlarged its operations. In those years the company operated under the name NV Industrieele Mij. "De Noord" .
On May 10, 1940, the western campaign began with the occupation of the Netherlands. The following day Alblasserdam was the victim of an artillery attack that killed 32 people. The Werf de Noord and 25 company apartments were destroyed, the ships lying at the shipyard were spared except for a few shell hits. After an inspection on May 15, the shipyard director announced that operations would be resumed at the completely destroyed shipyard.
Post-war years and merger
The post-war years brought full order books again and in 1954 the company celebrated its 50th anniversary with a gala evening in the Rivierahal in Rotterdam . At the beginning of the 1960s the shipyard was looking for a partner and in 1962 the NVC van der Giessen & Zonen's Scheepswerven in Krimpen aan den IJssel merged with the “De Noord” shipyard to form Van der Giessen-De Noord .
From 1968 the shipyard began using computers for the administration and construction. At the end of the Cold War , the number of new construction orders decreased, especially the naval orders. Nevertheless, in 1990 a new shipbuilding hall was built at the “De Noord” shipyard in Alblasserdam, which was sold to the yacht building company Oceanco due to a lack of new construction contracts . "De Noord" then only acted as a repair yard and continued to manufacture sections for the parent company in Krimpen aan den IJssel.
The last few years
In 1992 the company's workforce was given the opportunity to participate in the ownership. Share certificates were issued for ten guilders each and were administered by a foundation for five years before they were freely available for sale. The value per share had risen to 54 guilders by 1997. In September 1997 IHC-Caland (later SBM Offshore) offered 80 guilders per share and took over Van der Giessen-De Noord, but continued to run it under its own name. Three years later, plans were made to expand the shipbuilding company to Alblasserdam-Süd, but the construction of the section remained . From the same year 2000, the main shipyard received no further shipbuilding aid or any new construction contracts. An attempt was made to reorganize in September 2002, but after the last new building had been delivered to the client in December 2002, NV Van Der Giessen-De Noord announced its closure on August 25, 2003 and moved into the Liquidation.
Til today
The yacht building company OceAnco continued to use the last hangar built at Werf De Noord and expanded its facilities. Until 2009, some buildings and facilities on the Werf de Noord site between Zuiderstek and the bridge over the Noord were preserved. The Alblasserdam community built a new fire station on the site, for which all shipyard buildings have now been demolished without exception. On April 23, 2009 the last tower crane in the former shipyard was demolished.