Luonnonmaa shipyard – Navire Yard

Navire Yard’s shipyard was built on Luonnonmaa island in the early 1970s. The operations commenced in 1975. The shipyard repaired vessels of Viking Line and other shipping companies. In the beginning the shipyard employed 150 men, and the number was intended to be increased to 250. The biggest ship built in Finland up to then was delivered from Navire’s Naantali shipyard to a Norwegian customer in 1976. The completed ship was 266 metres long.

The operations of the shipyard were overshadowed from the beginning by the global oil crisis. In 1981 the shipyard was sold to a company formed by Rauma-Repola, Wärtsilä and Valmet, so that the shipyard would not be acquired by any foreign party.

Co-operative Teollisuuden Romu tried scrapping of ships at the shipyard in the 1980s. The general opinion was strongly against the scrapping operations. Even the Office of the President of Finland expressed its concern about the ship scrapping. Several ships were nevertheless dismantled. The operations stopped for a few years, but the scrapping restarted in 1991. A joint venture of three countries began to scrap obsolete warships of the Soviet Union’s Baltic Sea and Murmansk fleets. The scrapping was done by the Soviet-Finnish-English company Hamiscrap Oy. E.g. six submarines were scrapped in the area leased from Turun Korjaustelakka Oy.

”After three years of negative development the traffic in the Port of Naantali has shown signs of picking up.”

– Luotsi ja majakka publication 1/78