Vice President of the ARP: Gdańsk Shipyard builds order portfolio

During the conversation with Piotr Nisztor on Polish Radio 24, Vice-President of the Industrial Development Agency Andrzej Kensbok stated that the industrial potential of Gdańsk Shipyard, which was identified in the course of the analyses preceding the acquisition of the shipyard and GSG Towers by the ARP, is being developed today. He pointed out that the current situation on the ship market gives opportunities to develop and rebuild Polish shipbuilding companies.

The Deputy Head of the Industrial Development Agency stressed that the purchase of Gdańsk Shipyard and GSG Towers from the Ukrainian side, which was carried out last summer, was preceded by a detailed valuation of the assets resulting in both companies being acquired by the ARP at a price corresponding to the market value. He also added that the ultimately negotiated price was repeatedly lower than that initially expected by the Ukrainian side.

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Andrzej Kensbok said that the acquired companies were in a difficult financial situation, which resulted from the Ukrainian owner not developing ship production and concentrated solely on the wind tower market. But also in this case the production was not properly developed as the last wind towers were produced by GSG Towers in 2017.

The Industrial Development Agency has also found major infrastructure and technology deficiencies in the acquired companies. ARP's vice president said on the radio that there was no construction department in the companies, a technological department. There was also a lack of fundamental IT solutions, e.g. a system serving the warehouse economy, a system for recording working time or measuring production efficiency. Therefore, as IRP Vice President Andrzej Kensbok stressed, the first months after the acquisition of control of Gdańsk Shipyard and GSG Towers had to be dedicated to the restoration of a number of company functions, the introduction of IT solutions or the recovery of certificates and certificates from customers. During this time, the shipyard had to go through several audit and certification processes to regain formal certificates and reliability in the eyes of customers.

"At the moment, the shipyard has indeed regained its contractual capacity, acquired contracts, not only subcontracting to other Tri-urban shipyards or German shipyards, but with prestigious customers, final customers," said the vice president of the Industrial Development Agency. Andrzej Kensbok noted that these were reference contracts. This means that their execution will open up the yard's ability to obtain further orders.

In the context of the recently signed contract with the Finnish crane and crane manufacturer Konecranes, the vice-president of the ARP said that it is a framework contract which also includes arrangements for technology transfer and expresses the will for long-term cooperation in the production of equipment. This applies to areas such as design, programming or automation of production.

The Deputy Head of the Industrial Development Agency noted that currently the most profitable segment of shipbuilding production are constructions for offshore mining industry. This is primarily about mining platforms.

"These platforms are currently being built in the North Sea and the Barenst Sea by Norwegian Equinor, or former Statoil," said Andrzej Kensbok. – And here the shipyard managed to pass all, very rough, certification and obtain a large reference contract for the production of an offshore component of the mining platform," he added.

If this contract is successful, Gdańsk Shipyard will have a good chance to obtain further orders of this type. The vice-president of the ARP said that the Norwegian company is interested in extensive cooperation in the production of mining platforms. In the case of such production, the yard can expect the highest margins.

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Andrzej Kensbok noted that for the implementation of smaller contracts Gdańsk Shipyard is preparing to return to self-building. The company is already building hulls of units and hull blocks.

– These are large structures produced for one of the German shipyards. These are blocks of cruise ship hulls," said the vice president of the Industrial Development Agency.

He added that if the contract will run as planned, the total value of contracts acquired by Gdańsk Shipyard this year should range from PLN 100 to 200 million. Andrzej Kensbok pointed out that the ARP wanted the shipyard to triple such a cultivation result because it has such industrial opportunities. He also said that by signing an agreement with Szczecińska Shipyard Gdańsk will be able to participate in the construction ferrythe passenger ones.

The whole conversation with the Vice President of the Industrial Development Agency Andrzej Kensbok can be listened to at this link.

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