A 240 million zloty dock and a new chief executive. Gryfia begins its modernisation programme

- For the Gryfia ship repair yard this is a key moment: the new dock and the modernisation under way will widen the range of vessels the yard can repair and improve its position on the market - says Aleksandra Skibniewska, president of the fund.

Panamaxes and every Baltic ferry

A dock of 24,000 tonnes lifting capacity will allow Gryfia to repair Panamax-class vessels, the largest ships fitting the older locks of the Panama Canal, and practically every ferry operating on the Baltic. For a repair yard in Szczecin that is a change of scale, because passenger ferries and large merchant ships are a segment in which it competes with Gdańsk, Klaipėda and German yards.

The infrastructure around the dock is already in place: the quay has been rebuilt and the dock basin dredged. The dock itself is being built on the other side of the same city, at Wulkan, which also belongs to the fund.

Not a repair, but a repair with a margin

The fund prepared the modernisation programme with Gryfia between January and June 2026. It covers operational processes, technical development, infrastructure renewal and a stronger commercial effort. The aim is stated plainly: repairs and conversions of large merchant ships, passenger ferries and specialised multipurpose vessels, delivered on time and within budget.

The fund's president points out that the point is not simply to complete a repair, but to complete it with a margin that allows the company to grow, because only then can Gryfia compete in the long term. That sentence goes to the heart of the problem faced by Polish repair yards, which for years won contracts on price and lost money on them.

A new board implements a plan it previously reviewed

The programme is being implemented by a new management board. In September Artur Łopuszko became president of Gryfia, having previously sat on the supervisory board of the fund, with a background in Szczecin's shipbuilding industry. He knows the modernisation plan from the board's work, which reviewed it.

The division of roles is clear. The fund acts as an investor, financing the modernisation and the dock on market terms, while day-to-day implementation rests with the company's management. On the neighbouring island the Szczecin Ship Recycling Plant, co-founded by the fund, has already begun operating, part of the group's wider investments in that part of the city.

The fund expects tangible results, arising from the company's operational efficiency, by the end of next year.

Szczecin closes the chain

From an industry perspective the most interesting aspect is that the investments in Szczecin are starting to complement one another. Wulkan builds the dock for Gryfia, Gryfia is to use it to repair ferries and Panamaxes, and the recycling plant on the adjacent island closes the life cycle of ships. Three entities under one owner form something Polish shipbuilding has lacked: a chain from steel construction through repair to dismantling, in a single city.

The State Development Fund for Companies is a wholly state-owned company and a capital investor in the maritime economy. It holds 100 per cent of the Szczecin Shipyard Wulkan, 92.36 per cent of Gryfia's shares and 33.33 per cent of the Szczecin Ship Recycling Plant. It combines oversight of its subsidiaries with financing their development through loans, guarantees, sureties and leasing.

For Gryfia the next two years are the test. The dock will be there, the infrastructure is there, the plan and the management are in place. Whether Baltic ferries will be inside that dock in July 2027 will be decided not in Szczecin, but by shipowners.