Meyer Werft reveals plans for Turku shipyard

GERMANY based shipyard Meyer Werft has been busy on a number of fronts throughout 2014. It has delivered Quantum of the Seas to Royal Caribbean International, mounted all the blocks for the second Quantum class ship and laid the keel for Norwegian Cruise Line’s Norwegian Escape, as well as taking a 70 per cent stake in the former STX Finland shipyard in Turku

Its eye is very much on the future, as well. It has displayed the first prototype of a fuel cell, which ran throughout the summer, as part of a joint project with another German company to develop fuel cells to be used on ships.

The shipyard has eight cruise ships on its orderbook (Meyer Werft), 17 river cruise vessels (Neptun Werft) and three cruise ships plus one letter of intent for a ferry at Meyer Turku.

Demonstrating its dominance within the cruise market, the shipbuilder has constructed a total of 82 cruise ships in Turku and Papenburg. The market for river cruise vessels is growing; over the last few years it has built 49 ships at its Neptun Werft yard in Warnemünde. It has also constructed 119 roro ferries and 27 research vessels as well as 69 gas carriers.

Thomas Weigend, Meyer Werft, director, head of research, sales and design, told a press conference held to mark the 50th anniversary of ship flooring and decking specialist Bolidt, that the cruise ship sector was the main market for Meyer Werft, which has a 40 per cent market share of the 32 cruise ships on the global orderbook.

“What is special for us is that we have built a relatively high number of prototypes – 14 in 12 years,” he told representatives of the press. “While on the one hand it is nice to have repeat orders as they are very easy to build, on the other hand, if you only have repeats you are only building for one or two shipowners. We are proud to have built prototypes for many different customers. Every customer is different and this keeps us on our toes and stops us from just copying buildings from the past. However, building prototypes is a challenge as you need quite a big team for the development work.”

He said that North America was the main market for Meyer Werft’s clients, with 12 million passengers a year. Europe is the next biggest market, with six million passengers, while Asia is the market of the future.

He added: “At the end of the 1990s and in the early 2000s, there was very big demand for new cruise ships. Then 11 September happened. The orderbook went down then slowly picked up, but then we had the Lehman Brothers crisis and demand collapsed again. It has now stabilised and it will be interesting to see how the market will develop in the long term. There is a lot of dynamic in designing the ships.”

Mr Weigend said that the difference between the second generation of Celebrity Cruises ships (Century class) and the third (Solstice class) is enormous. “There is a lot of difference in 12 years. For example, lowering the public decks and narrowing the superstructure allowed us to add a balcony cabin deck, raising the balcony cabin ratio from 20 per cent for Celebrity Galaxy to 85 per cent for Celebrity Reflection,” he said.

On other fronts, Meyer Werft hit the headlines this year after it joined forces with the Finnish Government to sign a share purchase agreement with STX Finland Turku shipyard’s previous owner, STX Europe, in August 2014. This agreement means that Meyer Werft has the majority stake in the yard, now known as Meyer Turku.

“In the last couple of years there have been many changes in ownership and leadership. The shipyard [Turku] lost direction, despite its great history. It also has not invested for a long time but it has great potential to return to its former strength. The first thing is to get stable management, develop a long-term strategy and start with the right investment,” said Mr Weigend. “We will not just copy the Meyer Werft philosophy across to Turku. We are very careful about changing the system there, as that yard has some strengths which we do not, and vice versa. By stabilising the yard, it will definitely come back on track. The yards are synchronised but to a large extent they have their own systems.”

Meyer Turku started production of TUI Cruises’ Mein Schiff 5 in November 2014. Mein Schiff 4 will be delivered in spring 2015, while production of Mein Schiff 6 is expected to start in winter 2015.

When it comes to other orders, Mr Weigend says: “More orders are to be expected at Turku, but there is no urgency, because this would come in addition to work that we have at the moment. We have several projects that look quite promising, but we have no fixed targets at the moment.”

One of the biggest differences between the yards is that Meyer Turku does not use a covered dock, unlike Meyer Werft in Papenburg. “With Mein Schiff 3 they have elevated the level of pre-assembly in the blocks to a whole new level, keeping them inside as long as possible before moving them outside. More and more pre-assembly of blocks can reduce the amount of work done outside. We will look at that very closely. Even if production in Papenburg is completely covered, we like to shift as much of the outfitting work as possible into the block production before the blocks are lifted into the dock.”

Elsewhere, Meyer Werft is pushing forward with the development of fuel cells. It has set up a joint venture with German company Fischer Eco Solutions, which has already started developing fuel cells for land based applications. The fuel cell system that the two companies are developing for marine applications is a modular system that will run on methanol – because of its very low emissions – as well as other fuels.

“We had our first demonstration of this in summer 2014 when we delivered, during a protracted time span, 50kW of energy. We think the future is going to be in decentralised energy distribution, as this will increase the level of safety and produce lower emissions,” Mr Weigend said.

He told Passenger Ship Technology: “Ours is a decentralised system, which means that the amount of energy used can be matched to fit the needs of different areas. It consists of several units and is more flexible, being modular.” The system is being tested in land based installations, and test installations on ships will be done soon.

The shipyard has experience with other new technology. Out of 12 cruise ships in the orderbook, 10 are being fitted with scrubbers, including the already-delivered Mein Schiff 3 and Quantum of the Seas.

Regarding alternative fuels, Mr Weigend told Passenger Ship Technology: “I definitely think LNG will come to cruise ships and we estimate that by 2020 there will be double the number of ferries using LNG.”

Looking to the future, he told journalists at the press conference: “It is very difficult to predict what the future will bring. Demand is increasing and a lot of work is going into discussions with shipowners about energy saving and being environmentally friendly; about reducing the environmental footprint of the cruise ship in every respect.”

Asked about possible competition from Chinese shipyards, he said: “The key to building a cruise ship is the logistics. A big cruise ship can have 15 million parts. If you build up to three ships in one year that is 45 million parts. We have 1.2 million parts moving every day in the shipyard and we have to monitor all of these, so it is a big logistics puzzle. Ships are a very big logistics challenge. On this, and on the planning side, we [Europe] are still very far ahead.

“Chinese yards have a big cost advantage but wages are going up 8-10 per cent every year in coastal areas. Many other industries are moving in China, from coast to inland, but shipyards cannot do this. They are fixed to the higher cost location. That problem will grow.”

Asked whether European yards such as Meyer Werft might subcontract steel outfitting to Chinese yards, he said: “That is not a realistic scenario. Transportation would take far too long from China to Europe and what we need is not just empty steel blocks, but intelligent steel blocks with a high degree of pre-outfitting. For example, the prototype for Norwegian took 32 months from contract to building. We have to make construction time as short as possible even with a prototype. Building parts elsewhere would go against this.” PST

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