Damen plans major shipyard expansion
A burgeoning shipbuilding industry has prompted Damen to invest in new facilities.
One of Damen’s 35 shipyards will be equipped with additional repair facilities and a ship lift, the vessel builder says, in answer to ‘the need to strengthen the national maritime manufacturing industry’.
“There is no room for further growth at our yard in Harinxveld-Giessendam and so we are turning to Gorinchem,” says Damen Shipyards Hardinxveld managing director Jos van Woerkum. “We are seeing how, in the future, more work will be done for Dutch customers in the Netherlands.”
The work, which is scheduled for completion in late 2023, includes a 150-tonne ship lift, which is a major improvement on its existing 40-tonne lift at the Hardinxveld yard.
“As a result, we can respond to rising demand from local companies in the region, who have been customers in our home town of Hardinxveld from the very beginning,” Van Woerkum said.
The entire Hardinxveld workforce will move to the new-look yard, which ’will be an optimal location for the design, maintenance, repair, conversion and new building of ships of up to 90 metres’, Damen says.
Harinxveld will then be sold, the company confirmed.
