Crist has started Huragan's bow. The third Miecznik frigate is being built in two Gdynia yards at once

This is not news about a single steel block but about the model in which Polish naval shipbuilding now builds its ships: one yard integrates, others deliver sections, and the port channel replaces the motorway.

Three frigates at three stages

The Miecznik programme comprises three multi-role frigates of around 7,000 tonnes, built at PGZ Stocznia Wojenna to Babcock's Arrowhead 140 design. The first, Wicher, launched on 12 August, is being fitted out at the quay and is due to be delivered to the navy in 2029. The second, Burza, after her keel laying in December 2025, is at the section-building stage in the hall vacated by Wicher, with launch planned for the turn of 2027 and 2028. The third, Huragan, began in April with steel cutting, and her keel will be laid in November; delivery is planned for 2031.

The naval yard calls the programme the largest in the history of the Polish Navy and is working on the three sister ships in parallel, a situation without precedent in Polish shipbuilding for decades. Huragan's bow at Crist means that elements of all three frigates are now physically under construction in Gdynia at the same time.

- We have begun building the bow block for the third frigate of the Miecznik programme. It is the next stage of our participation in the largest shipbuilding programme in the history of the Polish Navy. We are proud to add our brick to each of these ships - the Crist yard wrote in its statement.

Crist, a private yard in a state programme

Crist is a privately owned yard that for years has built in Gdynia mainly for the offshore market: vessels for the construction and servicing of wind farms, specialised ships, hulls for yards in Western Europe. In September we wrote about its results against the European shipyard field, which showed the company to be among the few in Poland able to build large and complex structures for export. Participation in Miecznik is something different for it: work for the Polish Navy, to British documentation, to a warship standard that differs from the civilian one in welding, inspection and acceptance.

For PGZ Stocznia Wojenna, Crist is the partner that keeps the rhythm going. The hull hall at the naval yard holds one hull at a time: Wicher left it in August, Burza took it over the same month, Huragan will follow. When sections are built in parallel next door, the hull in the hall is assembled from finished blocks rather than built from plate, and that is the difference between six years for a prototype and the five years for a series ship that the yard promises.

A model Gdynia is testing on two programmes

The naval yard applies the same scheme to Ratownik, the rescue ship whose bow block the Szczecin yard Wulkan has been building since May; there the section will come from West Pomerania, here it will float across the port. In both cases Gdynia is the integrator responsible for the whole, and partners deliver finished parts of the hull. In Europe that is the norm: the Type 26 frigates for the Royal Navy are assembled from blocks from several yards, and Germany's F126 joins plants in Wolgast, Kiel and Hamburg. In Poland the model is new, and Miecznik is its first test at scale.

The benefit goes beyond the schedule. Every yard that builds a section of a warship gains certifications, procedures and people it did not have, and with them can bid for the next programmes, its own or others'. After three frigates Crist will hold a reference no other private yard in Poland has, and Wulkan after Ratownik its first naval work in years. Gdynia, where two yards are separated by a channel and the third, Nauta, by a few hundred metres of quay, has everything it takes to be the place where this model takes root.

Huragan's bow is for now cut steel. When the keel of the third frigate is laid in November, three ships of this class will be under construction in Gdynia, something the Polish coast has never seen.