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Traditional German shipyards fear for the future |
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Monday, 15 March 2010 |
 Several changes of ownership after German reunification haven't improved the outlook for the once-proud Baltic Sea shipyards of Rostock and Wismar. But now there could be a glimmer of hope on the horizon.
Before the eastern German shipyards in Rostock-Warnemuende and Wismar
had to file for insolvency in June 2009, they were among the strongest
yards in the country. But then, the global financial crisis took its
toll.
"Financial institutions have behaved a bit differently since the
crisis," said shipbuilder Gunnar Flemming. "The banks do have money;
after all they received it from the government. But they won't spend it
properly, they won't give us the necessary credits."
Flemming was one of several thousand workers who demonstrated earlier
this week in front of the regional parliament in Schwerin in an effort
to protect their jobs.
Since their founding in 1946, the shipyards in Rostock and Wismar were
always among the biggest employers in what is now the state of
Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.
After Germany's reunification, the shipyards saw a number of new owners
coming and going, among them investors from western Germany, Norway and
more recently Russia. All of them had promised a bright future for the
shipbuilding sector on the Baltic coast, but failed to live up to
expectations.
Russia to the rescue?
When the global recession set in, the shipyards stopped receiving any
fresh orders which led to their bankruptcy last year. In August 2009,
Russian investor Vitaly Yusufov bought the Rostock and Wismar facilities
for some 40 million euros ($55 million) and renamed them Nordic Yards.
Yusufov promised to secure contracts predominantly from Russian
companies which he said were in need of modernizing their fleets. And he
promised to save about 1,200 jobs in the long run, with the bulk of the
former shipbuilders already transferred to a state-financed interim
company offering qualification schemes.
Now the waiting game may soon be over for many workers after the Russian
owner secured an order for a large icebreaker-cum-cargo vessel from the
Russian company Norilsk Nickel to be built at the Wismar shipyard.
Construction work is set to start in July, but the pre-financing of the
order couldn't be agreed upon during a meeting on Tuesday between Vitaly
Yusufov, government representatives from Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania
and bankers.
"When you see what was done to save incapable banks and what was done to
save the automobile industry in Germany, and when you see what is not
being done to save the shipbuilding industry, you'll realize that we've
got a big problem here," said Steffen Bockhahn, a parliamentarian for
the Left Party in Rostock.
Distant ships, distant hopes
Professor Gerald Braun from the Rostock Institute for Entrepreneurship
and Regional Development says he feels for the angry shipbuilders in
eastern Germany, but believes they are pursuing a lost cause. He points
to the hundreds of thousands of jobs that have been axed in the
shipbuilding sector across Europe since the late 1970s.
To ensure survival, Wismar and Rostock would have to find a niche to
cater for the high-end and renewable energy off-shore markets, according
to Professor Braun. However, he feels that it might already be too late
to enact the necessary changes and that Germany is falling behind
competitors in Taiwan, South Korea, China and India.
But Nordic Yards owner Vitaly Yusufov remains confident that better
times are ahead. He is optimistic that the one order he has secured so
far is only the beginning.
Whether or not his optimism is well-founded will be revealed on March
24, when a final decision is due to be reached on the pre-financing of
the ordered tanker. If the banks are unable or unwilling to lend
sufficient credit, the shipbuilding industry in eastern Germany is
likely to sink for the last time.
Source: Deutsche Welle
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