Genting Hong Kong and Nordic Yards signed a contract on Tuesday, under which the global leisure company will take over three Nordic Yards’ shipyards for EUR 230.6 million.
Nordic Yards has built and delivered three offshore converter platforms to Siemens, and is currently working on the fourth one, ordered by the GE. Herbert Aly, managing director of Nordic Yards, said that his company will meet its contractual obligations towards GE.
One of the requirements of the takeover was that the entire workforce should be kept on. The transfer of the Nordic Yards workforce will be implemented in several phases, which are connected with progress on the DolWin gamma platform .
Currently, 1,400 workers are employed at the three shipyards in Wismar, Warnemünde and Stralsund.
Nordic Yards said it has been analysing the cruise ship market since early 2014, in response to stagnating or even falling developments in the fields of offshore wind, offshore oil and gas and on the Russian market.
Strategies were revised at an early stage in order to align the company with future market developments. Interest on the part of Genting in Nordic Yards arose as a result of these activities, Nordic Yards explained.
The purchase will enable Genting Hong Kong to realize its global cruise ships fleet strategy over the next decade. At the start of the year, Genting acquired all the shares in Bremerhaven’s Lloyd Werft. The result is a group consisting of four shipyards in Northern Germany.