Page 36: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (March 2011)

36 Maritime Reporter & Engineering News

FEATURE SHIP REPAIR & CONVERSION

By Henrik Segercrantz

The Grand Bahama Shipyard Limited is owned by the world's two biggest cruise ship operators, Carnival Corpora- tion and Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd., each with an equal shareholding of 40 percent, together with the Grand Bahama

Port Authority, with a 20 percent share- holding. The ship repair yard based in

Freeport, Grand Bahama, services the two shipowners' growing fleets of cruise ships, but also cruise ships owned by other cruise lines. An increasing number of other types of vessels also utilize the yard for service and repairs. With three large floating docks, the yard is today a leading repair yard in the western hemi- sphere, and by far the world's biggest re- pair yard for cruise ships.

The quality policy of the yard is to pro- vide a service equal to or exceeding the quality standard required by the customer for refitting and repair of all classes of maritime vessels. The yard has been ac- credited to ISO 9001:2008 by Lloyds

Register since 2003 and is fully certified and operates a Health and Safety Man- agement System that is in compliance with OHSAS 18001:2007 and Environ- mental Management Systems in compli- ance with and ISO 14001:2004.

Carl-Gustaf (Calle) Rotkirch took over at the management of the yard, as ap- pointed Chairman and Chief Executive

Officer, just at the time when the third new floating dock, acquired from Europe, was being towed over the Atlantic Sea in summer 2008. "It actually arrived a few days late to the yard, in September, as the route had to be changed due to a hurri- cane," Rotkirch tells Maritime Reporter in a recent interview (which did unfortu- nately not take place at the yard in the

Bahamas, but in an ice cold Helsinki, in

February). "Everything went well with the first commercial docking done in De- cember that year," he recalls.

Before arriving at the Bahamas,

Rotkirch, a 61 year young Finnish Naval

Architect, had behind him an extensive career at various shipbuilder and man- agement positions at the shipyards in Fin- land. Importantly, he had built ships for both the ship owners of Grand Bahama

Shipyard, before taking on his current job.

Grand Bahama Shipyard strategically enjoys the duty-free and tax free status of the tax-free zone of Freeport, Grand Ba- hama. It also enjoys a solid local cur- rency, pegged 1 to 1 to the U.S. dollar.

The repair yard was originally set up, in

January 1999, by Germany's Lloyd Werft shipyard, together with the Hong Kong-

Bahaman consortium Freeport Harbor

Company, owned by Hong Kong-based

Hutchison-Whampoa and the Grand Ba- hama Port Authority. The current owner- ships structure has been in place since 2001.

The first floating drydock had Panamax dimensions, as did the cruise ships at that time. The yard had in the beginning some 100 employees. In year 2002 the yard re- ceived a second floating drydock, and when the third dock arrived, the company had grown "to a full scale ship repair fa- cility with revenues of over $130 million and an average number of permanent and temporary employees of over 800," as

Rotkirch noted in his inaugural speech of that dock. Today Grand Bahama Ship- yard operates three floating drydocks and has all the services required to perform

At Grand Bahama Shipyard

Cruise, Merchant Vessels Well Serviced

The Grand Bahama Shipyard Limited is owned by the world's two biggest cruise ship operators,

Carnival Corp. and Royal Caribbean, each with an equal shareholding of 40%, together with the Grand Bahama Port Authority, with a 20% shareholding.