A hundred metres long and 22 metres high. A floating block from Gdynia sails for Saint-Nazaire

Not just steel

The scope of work matters more than the dimensions. The structure has been partly outfitted and painted. Piping and ventilation systems have been installed, along with equipment and electrical systems including partially completed cabling.

That distinction determines the value of the contract. A bare steel hull block is the lowest-priced product in the entire shipbuilding chain. A partly outfitted block, with pipe runs, ventilation and cabling in place, demands design work, coordination between disciplines and quality control at a different level altogether, while shortening assembly time at the receiving yard.

That is why such sections are prepared at a specialist supplier rather than on the building dock, where every week costs more.

More than a decade of cooperation

The delivery of block B35 is another CRIST project for Chantiers de l'Atlantique and confirms more than ten years of continuous cooperation between the two yards.

Chantiers de l'Atlantique is one of the three European yards that dominate large cruise ship construction, alongside Italy's Fincantieri and Germany's Meyer Werft. All three work to a model in which a substantial part of the hull and its sections is built away from the home yard, at trusted subcontractors, while the main yard handles design, integration, interior outfitting and handover to the owner.

Within that arrangement, Gdynia has for years occupied the position of supplier of large, complex structures that must arrive ready to be joined into the hull.

Transport as a task in itself

Moving a structure of these dimensions is an operation in its own right. A block 22 metres high and up to 57 metres wide fits no standard transport formula, and shifting it requires a vessel with sufficient capacity and stability, prepared sea fastenings and a route planned around the weather.

Loading three additional bow blocks onto the same vessel shows that transport is planned to deliver a complete set of sections from a given stage in a single voyage.

What it says about Polish shipbuilding

The contract illustrates the real position of Polish yards in the European value chain. Cruise ships are not built in Poland today, but without companies such as CRIST those ships would not be delivered on schedule.

It also shows the direction worth taking. The more outfitting is completed in Gdynia, the higher the value of the order and the harder the supplier is to replace. A block with systems and cabling is a very different negotiating position from a section of welded plate.

The same pattern appears in another project now under way at the Gdynia yard: hulls for advanced fibre-optic cable-laying vessels for OMS Group, completed afterwards at Ulstein Verft in Norway. The model is identical, and the question for the coming years is how to move one step further along it.