16 Lloyd’s List Monday November 2, 2009 Shipyards beat off recession blues Dutch yards Damen Ship Repair and Keppel Verolme have reported encouraging results so far this year YOU are not going to hear the manag- ing directors of Rotterdam's two major shipyards complain about the reces- sion. Both men state that the first half of this year performed very well, just like the boom years of 2007-2008. “Tt was a gigantic peak and now the market has returned to normal, which is still a good level of busi- ness,’ said the managing director of Damen Ship Repair in Schiedam, Wim Klosterman. He reported that the Schiedam yard was now operating as normal, “We will just go on with trying to find new personnel to replace the retiring employees and to strengthen the management: We are very busy with our investment programme of renewing the yard,” he said. All the yard’s cranes have com- pleted their major maintenance serv- ice and at the end of summer 2008 a floating dock was renewed. Work on the renewal of dock cover number six will be completed this month. ‘Mr Kloosterman did not predict that the market would worsen to any great degree, but said that it should remain at “a sound level’, He added: “A lot of ships have been laid up, but the shipping business will improve and you can already see some improvement in the market” The biggest decline noted by Mr Kloosterman was in the market for offshore maintenance and recon- struction work, a fairly lucrative sec- tor in which DSR last year became more and more of a competitor to Keppel Verolme, its neighbour across the Nieuwe Waterweg. Mr Klosterman said: “All the companies in the offshore market postponed their orders, in order to frighten their suppliers and so pres- sure them to offer lower prices. But next year and in 2011 they will have to invest massively” The managing director of Keppel Verolme, Harold Linssen, said that the first half of this year was “extremely good’, and that subse- quently the market has declined with percentages. “Until now we have succeeded in Linssen: Keppel Verolme has succeeded in battling through the current downturn. battling through this situation,” Mr Linssen said: It is a matter of tim- ming down the organisation to a “normal” size, such as before the boom years, although the number of personnel will stay the same. Mr Linssen and his team are now working on bigger offshore recon- struction and newbuilding projects for 2010 and 2011. “The offshore market is very quiet right now, but there are still a lot of projects in the pipeline. The problem is that decisions are now taken after a period of many reviews, compared with the short decision lines we have seen in the past” he explained.