Cruise ship owners typically have a ten-year dry-dock maintenance program, set according to classification society rules. This means that ships usually enter dry dock every two or three years, or every five years, depending on the ship's age.
Article from CruisesNews magazine no. 68 – March 2024
The cruise ship owner reserves the dry dock for five-year periods because most of the required work cannot be done while the ship is in service. This downtime must be kept to a minimum.
Grand Bahama Shipyard. Carnival and Royal Caribbean.
The leading player in cruise ship repair is Grand Bahama Shipyard (GBS), founded in Freeport in 1999 with a single Panamax floating dock. Although initially German-owned, its ownership soon passed to Carnival Corp. (40%), Royal Caribbean (40%), and the Grand Bahama Port Authority (the remaining 20%), who immediately recognized the advantage of having a large repair facility 93 miles from Miami. In 2002, a second floating dock, capable of accommodating ships up to 150,000 GT, became operational. A third dock, purchased in France and of the same size, arrived in 2008. That year, GBS repaired 15 cruise ships, three fewer than in 2007, and was already a world leader in the field. Around that time, it also entered more specialized segments of ship repair, such as installing additional generator sets on three Royal Caribbean Cruises ships.
Since 2007, GBS has offered project management services for ship refurbishment and revitalization projects. The shipyard's activity continued to thrive for approximately a decade, although it began losing projects because its floating docks could not accommodate the new megaships of the Oasis series, as well as due to the rise of new cruise destinations, primarily in Asia, Europe, and Alaska. For example, in the first eight months of 2013, the Grand Bahama Shipyard received 17 cruise ships. During that decade, ships from other cruise lines, such as NCL and MSC Cruises, began arriving at its docks.
Cruise ship owners are also the owners of the world's leading ship repair shipyards for that segment
However, in 2019, the shipyard's fortunes changed completely. In April, the facility's largest dry dock suffered a catastrophic structural failure while repairing Royal Caribbean's Oasis of the Seas, including the collapse of a crane onto the vessel. And in September, another of the floating docks was damaged during Hurricane Dorian. In one fell swoop, ships operating in the Caribbean were left without their repair base. The shipyard had to lay off hundreds of workers, and European shipyards began to take advantage of the situation, while Carnival and Royal Caribbean searched for a solution. The pandemic dealt another severe blow to the shipyard, delaying all plans to relaunch its operations. Nevertheless, GBS never closed and maintained operations with its third floating dock.
The solution arrived in October 2023, when the Bahamian government approved a project, planned since 2019, to revitalize the Grand Bahama Shipyard. The project includes a $600 million investment for the construction of two new floating docks, as well as improvements to the Freeport outfitting piers. When the project is completed in 2026, the shipyard will have two new floating docks that will be among the largest in the world, awarded to CSSC Qingdao Beihai Shipbuilding Company. One of them will have the world's largest lifting capacity, capable of servicing any cruise ship in service.
The shipyard is the largest industrial employer in the Bahamas and is vital to the archipelago's economy. This expansion project, first announced in 2022, will create a significant economic boost for Grand Bahama. In addition to the new floating dry docks, the project includes the construction of other infrastructure in Freeport. Construction began in the fourth quarter of 2023 and is scheduled for completion in 2025.
Efforts to expand Grand Bahama come as other new players seek to enter the Caribbean ship repair market. German investors are developing a smaller repair shipyard in Jamaica, while the Balboa shipyard on the Panama Canal has been restarted. Fincantieri also signed an agreement in late 2020 to establish a ship repair facility in Mexico, while in 2022 another giant, Damen, invested nearly $40 million in its Curaçao shipyard.
On the American West Coast, shipyards like Vigor and Seaspan stand out, capable of refitting the largest vessels serving Alaska, their main clients. Vessels serving Australia and the Far East utilize Sembawang's facilities in Singapore.
Navantia,
this Spanish state-owned shipyard, has further consolidated its position in recent years as Europe's leading specialist in cruise ship repair. Navantia boasts one of the largest dry docks in Europe (386 x 66 meters and 440,000 DWT) and over 3,000 meters of quays with a 9-meter draft. Furthermore, it can utilize the even larger dry dock in Puerto Real (500 x 100 meters) and has the two largest gantry cranes in Spain. This success stems from a 2011 agreement between RCCL and Navantia to repair five ships between 2011 and 2013. That year, the Splendour of the Seas arrived, requiring five weeks of work and over 100,000 hours. It was fitted with a ducktail, 124 balconies, an LCD screen in the pool, and other amenities. Since that year, the docks of Cádiz and Puerto Real have received cruise ships on more than one hundred occasions, from such major operators as Carnival Cruise Lines, RCI, Disney, Marella Cruises, etc. Particularly noteworthy is the fact that all the refits of the Oasis-class megaships have been carried out in Cádiz since 2015; and that the pre-delivery refit of the Icon of the Seas was also performed last December in dock number 4 of the Cádiz shipyard.
Competition from countries with low labor costs puts a lot of pressure on ship maintenance and repair jobs, but there are still market niches for European shipyards, such as cruise ships
Navantia managed a total of 14 cruise ship projects in 2022, following the repair of 18 cruise ships in 2021. That year was exceptionally strong due to the return of cruises after the worst of the pandemic, with many projects postponed. During 2023, Navantia repaired thirteen cruise ships, after a slower second half of the year. Highlights in 2023 included the dry-docking of the Carnival Pride and the Carnival Freedom in October, which included replacing its funnel. 2024 began in Cádiz with three Carnival Cruise Lines ships: notably, the conversion of the Costa Firenze into the Carnival Firenze, following the successful completion of the Carnival Venezia refit in 2023.
Other Spanish shipyards that have entered the cruise ship maintenance sector are ASTICAN, which in its syncrolift in Las Palmas careens small cruise ships, from the expedition or sailing cruise segment, with clients such as Sea Cloud or SunStone; or Metalship, in Vigo, also focused on that same segment, which is currently working on the Ocean Explorer.
Palumbo Valletta, MSC Cruises' Shipyard:
Continuing its trend of controlling the shipyards where its vessels are repaired, MSC Cruises acquired 50% of Palumbo Malta Shipyard in July 2020, with the other 50% remaining in the hands of the Palumbo Group. This gives all MSC Cruises ships based in the Mediterranean, as well as GNV ferries, preferential access to Valletta, which boasts one of the largest dry docks in Europe. The agreement marked a change of ownership for the Maltese shipyard, ten years after the Palumbo Group acquired it from the Maltese State. It also represented a significant improvement to its operations, allowing them to intensify their focus on cruise ships, ferries, and other specialized vessels. Furthermore, it entailed a commitment to specific investments to enhance the shipyard's operational and environmental efficiency, as well as to cultivate specialized local suppliers to support the shipyard. In 2024, for example, six MSC Cruises ships will undergo maintenance at Palumbo Valletta. MSC Cruises also uses other shipyards for its ships' refits, in destinations such as the Caribbean and China.
In the Mediterranean, Fincantieri also stands out, which owns the Palermo shipyard, equipped with a dry dock of 370×68 meters, and the Trieste shipyard, with another dry dock of 295×56 meters.
Chantier Naval de Marseille and Costa Cruises:
In April 2010, Chantiers Naval de Marseille (CNM) was created by the Italian group Genova Industrie Navale (GIN), a consortium formed by the Italian companies San Giorgio del Porto and T. Mariotti, after obtaining a 25-year concession to operate two dry docks measuring 270 and 320 meters in length. Their intention was to provide Marseille with a service for ships that, due to lack of space, could not be repaired in the public docks they share in Genoa. In 2012, the concession was extended to allow the operation of Europe's largest dry dock, Forme 10, measuring 465 meters long and 85 meters wide, which had been unused since 2000. The selection of Marseille as a home port by several cruise operators offered significant business prospects, and the fact that only two shipyards in the northern Mediterranean—Marseille and Palermo—could meet the complex demands of the cruise industry guaranteed its success. Forme 10 required five years of construction and millions of euros in investment before receiving its first ship, the MSC Orchestra, in 2017.
In August of that year, Costa acquired a 33.3% stake in CNM. Consequently, its fleet began undergoing repairs in Marseille, with more than fifteen dry-docks completed to date. However, the Marseille dry docks are open to all shipowners: one of its main users is NCLH, the only major cruise line without its own repair shipyard, and MSC, Royal Caribbean, and Carnival also utilize its facilities.
Ship repair has shifted its center of gravity from the North Sea, with shipyards like B+V in Hamburg, Lloyd-Werft in Bremerhaven, Damen in Rotterdam, etc., moving to the Mediterranean. Only the Damen shipyard in Brest has improved its figures in the last decade, thanks mainly to cruise ships based in the UK.
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