NEPTUN WERFT has reason to celebrate: On August 27, 1997, the shipyards in Papenburg and Rostock merged to form the MEYER NEPTUN Group. Now NEPTUN WERFT has been part of the MEYER Group for 25 years. The shipyard on the Baltic Sea looks back on a long shipbuilding tradition: It dates back to a company founded in 1850 and has built more than 1,500 new ships and repaired a further thousand since then.
Today, the shipyard with its 500 employees is one of the market leaders in the construction of river cruise ships. With the construction of floating engine room modules, NEPTUN WERFT has also developed into a key link between MEYER WERFT in Papenburg and MEYER TURKU in Finland. The product portfolio also includes ferries, gas tankers, research vessels and other special ships.
"Over the past 25 years, NEPTUN WERFT has developed into an important location for the MEYER Group and today contributes significantly to its success. Through continuous investments, the shipyard has always developed further, such as with the new construction of Hall 8a, which went into operation in 2018. We are very pleased to now celebrate this anniversary together," says Managing Director Bernard Meyer.
In 1997, Bernard Meyer invested in a shipyard that was part of the legacy of the Bremen Vulkan and which, like many other former GDR companies, had already undergone mass layoffs. In the years that followed, the Rostock shipyard initially produced steel construction sections for the Papenburg site and mainly carried out ship repairs. This was because strict EU regulations initially prevented NEPTUN from producing seagoing newbuildings. In 2000, the shipyard was completely relocated from the city center of Rostock to Warnemünde. There followed the first own, larger project for the site: The container ship Al Shuwaikh was converted into an animal transport ship in 2001.
By this time, the shipyard had been able to land new orders for the construction of other types of ships: The construction of river cruise ships began. This market became the shipyard's core competence and shaped its success for well over the next decade. In 2002, the first two river cruise ships, the A-Rosa Bella and the A-Rosa Donna, were delivered. Other inland cruise guest ships for A-Rosa, Premicon and Viking followed. Last year, NEPTUN WERFT completed the longest series of sister ships in the world with 65 river cruise ships for Viking River Cruises. This means that the shipyard in Warnemünde has delivered a total of 82 river cruise ships to date.
NEPTUN is also working intensively on research projects in this market. For example, intensive research is being conducted on new climate-neutral forms of energy generation using fuel cells with the River Cell Demonstrator.
Since 2017, NEPTUN WERFT has been manufacturing floating engine room modules, the centerpieces for the cruise ships of MEYER WERFT and MEYER TURKU. Starting with the module for the AIDAnova, the shipyard has delivered 13 of them to shipyards within the group to date.
