Page 58: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (June 2013)

58 Maritime Reporter & Engineering News ? JUNE 2013 German shipbuilders concentrated in 2012 on building cruise ships, megay-achts, freight ferries and additional high-value, specialty ships. In total, nine German shipyards across 12 shipbuild-ing sites supplied 21 sea going ships with a total tonnage of 473,700. While the group expects a slow but steady recovery from what have been a historic economic malaise, it is gener- ally agreed that in the next few years, difÞ culty in the merchant shipbuilding sector will continue.Apparently, though, the maritime economy starting to recover after years of crisis. In 2012, while the situation in the German shipbuilding industry can-not be classiÞ ed uniformly as good, at the very least it was a better situation than in 2011. After many years of decline, the Ger- man shipbuilding industry has seen its employment numbers increase, as in September 2012 there were 16,852 di-rectly employed people working on all German shipbuilding sites, a growth about 3.1%, or a net increase of 501 employees. This is a particularly posi- tive development, particularly when one looks at the period between 2008 and 2011 when about 4,200 employees had lost their jobs. Overall it has been an active and in some regards uneven year for the Ger- man shipbuilding industry, as some yard expanded and tried successfully to de-velop the offshore market, as well as develop the tools and talent for the con-struction of special ships. On the other hand, some shipyards had to decrease the number of employees and in some extreme cases, applied for insolvency. But per usual, the hallmark of Ger- man shipbuilding is diversity, and the types of merchant vessels built is wide spread, and includes four RoRos and three cruise ships, as well as one multi-purpose cargo ship, one LNG tanker, a dredger and a rescue cruiser, plus Þ ve authority ships of different types. In- cluded in the balance are six megay-achts and seven river cruise ships.Only six cargo ships were christened in Germany last year, which includes four freight ferries delivered by Flens-burger Schiffbaugesellschaft (FSG), one multi-purpose vessel from Ferus Smit and also one LNG-tanker supplied by Meyer Shipyard; signiÞ cant in that it is the only new build tanker from a German shipyard. Perhaps even more signiÞ cant is the fact that for the Þ rst time, since the dawn of the container shipbuilding age, not a single newbuild container carrier of any size comes from Germany. High Export Percentage When you look solely at the number of The YearbookGerman ShipbuildingFair & Partly Cloudy German Shipbuilding Prospects are While econo-mies across Europe have essentially bum-bled, stumbled and fumbled in the wake of the global economic meltdown, Germany has remained compari- tively strong. Despite the general migration of shipbuilding to the Far East, we decided to check in on the cur- rent status of this proud nation with a strong maritime heritage.By Peter PospiechThere are few maritime sites as spec- tacular as seeing a newly built cruise ship, in this case Celebrity Reß ection, make the journey from the Meyer Shipyard, Papenburg up the river Ems to the North Sea. MR #6 (58-65).indd 58MR #6 (58-65).indd 585/31/2013 10:03:03 AM5/31/2013 10:03:03 AM