Company insight
Europe’s premier shipyards set up for success
With itineraries opening up and restrictions being lifted, shipyards will have their hands full with new projects. For cruise operators, the choice of shipyard is crucial to the success of a new project. We speak to Manolo Cavaliere, commercial director of San Giorgio del Porto and Chantier Naval de Marseille, part of the Genova Industrie Navali group, about what being the right partner means.
s cruise vessels take to the sea again and operators prepare for a brighter future, refits and new builds are on the agenda. In fact, many projects continued during even the worst of the lockdowns, though at a slower pace. Now, cruise operators are looking to find the right partners for construction and refit projects, in order to make the relaunch of the industry a success. “The cruise market is regaining its footing slowly, and I know that new owners want to come into the market, which is good,” says Manolo Cavaliere, commercial director of San Giorgio del Porto and Chantier Naval de Marseille. “We want to continue working with the main cruise companies, for whom we have a lot of experience on past projects, so the two shipyards that we manage remain busy.” The Genova Industrie Navali group manages two shipyards, having founded San Giorgio del Porto in Genoa, Italy, in 1928, and acquired Chantier Naval de Marseille in France in 2010. Its old asset and its newest acquisition – which in 2017 opened Forme 10, the largest dry dock in the Mediterranean – are host to major projects for leading cruise lines. Currently, the Norwegian Jewel is in Marseille undergoing refurbishment, while in March two vessels from Costa Cruises were in dry dock, and in April the Seabourn Ovation will be the major focus. The larger facilities in Marseille include more space to accommodate the logistics element, which is vital when working on a new vessel. “We’ve been in Genova for almost 100 years and in Marseille for 12 years, and we have different facilities in each location,” says Cavaliere. “Marseille has a bigger dry dock and two others that are good for cruise vessels, and we can accommodate larger vessels such as the Wonder of the Seas from Royal Caribbean.”
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Wonder Of The Seas and Norwegian Jewel at Marseille’s dry dock.
“Both facilities do ship repair and conversion and, due to the nature of the facilities, we do small cruise and ferries and ships in Genova and the larger vessels in Marseille,” he adds. “We work with Costa, Carnival, Seabourn, NCL, Celebrity and many other leading brands, which appreciate our main characteristic, namely flexibility. We can provide a full range of services to our clients on both normal and more complex projects.”
Construction, cooperation and Covid For these two shipyards, the cruise and ferry markets are the main focus, so it was important to work closely with operators throughout the pandemic to ensure that key projects stayed on track.
“At the beginning of the pandemic, the projects we had already in our portfolio were put on hold due to the restrictions, but frankly, in the past two years we continued to work on cruise vessels,” says Cavaliere. “We did not stop, we had continuity, even during the most challenging times.” “Restrictions meant it was not easy to use subcontractors from outside France or Italy,
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so we worked with our people internally and that was a key element to enable us to carry on,” he adds. “Eventually, we found a way to find subcontractors in our region and follow all Covid-19 procedures in Europe, and after the first two or three months we found a way to go ahead with long-term projects.” An advantage the group offers is the ability to pool the expertise and resources of both shipyards, which are only 400km from each other. Additionally, Marseille is very close to the popular home port of Barcelona. “From the logistics side, Marseille has incredible facilities and more space, and we work closely with San Giorgio, so the ports work together as a team,” says Cavaliere. “We can transfer skills and experience, and we have a good network of subcontractors that can work in both.” With five dry docks, over 1,400m of equipped docks and an area of almost 70,000m² in Genoa, and three dry docks (including Forme 10) in Marseille, the group has the capacity and the skill to help the cruise industry return to the seas in style. ●
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