Papenburg, January 27, 2015 – MEYER WERFT celebrates its anniversary: on 28 January 2015, it will be 220 years since the shipyard in Papenburg an der Ems first opened, originally established by Willm Rolf Meyer in 1795 as 'Thurm Werft' on the main Papenburg canal. A hotel and the Papenburg city hall now stand at the original location.
The shipyard is now in its sixth and seventh generations of family ownership and is managed by its CEOs Bernard Meyer, Dr. Jan Meyer and Lambert Kruse.
In its early days, the shipyard built sailing ships from wood. It quickly went on to display a pioneering spirit when it became the first shipyard in the region to build ships from iron and equip them with steam engines. The Triton paddle steamer in 1874 was the first ship of this kind. By this time, the company was in its third generation of family management, under Joseph Lambert Meyer.
In 1913, the company performed yet another pioneering act, with the construction of the Graf Goetzen. After its completion, this combined ship for both passengers and freight was dismantled into its component parts, packed into crates, transported to Lake Tanganyika in what is now Tanzania, and reassembled. It remains in use there to this day, where it has become the stuff of legends in many books and films.
The economic crash and two world wars plunged the world into difficult times. But the decision taken at an early stage not to construct naval vessels meant that the shipyard was soon able to rebuild its operations. A new ship was delivered in 1948, in the form of the light vessel Elbe 1 (Bürgermeister O`swald), which, due to numerous interruptions, took a total of nine years to build.
In the post-war period, Joseph-Franz Meyer was soon concentrating his attention on the international markets, particularly Indonesia. The partnership resulted in many pas-senger vessels being built for the South Asian archipelago state. Joseph-Franz Meyer was also not only responsible for the construction of many ferries for Scandinavian shipping companies but also for entering the gas tanker market. Yet another unusual and courageous move, and one which was to have a considerable effect on the com-pany's development, came about in 1973/74. In the middle of the Cold War, the ship-yard accepted a contract to build six gas tankers for the former Soviet Union – and at the same time the company began building a new shipyard on the edge of Papenburg, directly on the Ems.
The new compact shipyard at the company's present location coupled with its success-ful entry into the cruise ship market marked the start of its now famed development into one of Europe's leading shipbuilding businesses. By conducting several stages of in-vestment, the medium-sized company was able to continually develop both the ship-yard's facilities and the know-how of its employees. The shipyard established its market position with the construction of two covered shipbuilding docks, an innovative laser and pipe centre, and a large and highly specialised supplier family.
The Homeric in 1986 was the first large-scale complex project in the cruise ship market to be completed by MEYER WERFT from Papenburg. This ship ushered in a major course change in its recent development, for which the ongoing boom in the cruise ship market was also partly responsible. The location on the Ems, although at times the subject of controversial discussion, was clearly the right place to produce cruise ships and other special-purpose vessels, with the Quantum of the Seas and the new Sonne research vessel the most recent examples of the company's technical and logistical achievements.
Today, the family-owned company maintains its success with its three sites in Papen-burg, Rostock-Warnemünde and Turku. Following a takeover in 1997, the river cruiser segment was successfully established at Rostock, while in Turku, nine cruise ships are currently being built along with several innovative ferries.
Further details of the company's extensive history are available online from www.meyerwerft.com -> Shipyard-> Company History
In addition, the Meyer Werft visitor centre is to be reopened in March 2015 as a new shipbuilding discovery centre, offering even more insights into the company's and fam-ily's history.
Models of ships built in Papenburg can be seen at the Deutsches Museum in Munich, the International Maritime Museum in Hamburg and the German Shipping Museum in Bremerhaven.
