Ratownik's bow block, a new dock and ship recycling. Szczecin's state-owned yards look for niches

- The production of bulk carriers and container ships has stayed in Asia and will in all likelihood not return to European yards quickly. Our strategic bet is on building niche competences and technologically advanced projects. We invest in our companies on market terms, so contracts have to be delivered on time and within budget. They are what pays for infrastructure and for skilled staff - said Aleksandra Skibniewska, president of the Fund for Company Development.

Wulkan: from buoys for the maritime office to a warship for the navy

In this arrangement Wulkan is the yard returning to naval production. It obtained its military production licence this year, and that licence allowed it to take the order for Ratownik's bow section, the first naval work in Szczecin in years, which we described last week alongside Crist's analogous cooperation with PGZ on the frigate Huragan. In parallel the yard is building a buoy tender for the Maritime Office in Szczecin and, for a Chinese manufacturer of wind turbine foundations, secondary steel structures, that is platforms, walkways and other foundation fittings; that work, the Fund writes, grows year by year.

The yard plans two new production halls and an increase in the capacity of the Odra Nowa slipway to 10,000 tonnes, which means the ability to launch hulls far larger than today's sections. The combination of three orders, a vessel for the maritime office, offshore components for the Chinese and a block of a warship, illustrates the strategy: three niches, three different customers, not a single bulker.

Gryfia: a dock that changes the scale

Since September 2025 Gryfia has had rebuilt quays, a 57-metre pier, a dock pit 17 metres deep and yards serving as the operational base for the new floating dock Wulkan is completing. The dock will enter Gryfia's assets in July 2027 and will allow it to take in for repair the largest ships able to call at the Szczecin–Świnoujście port complex. It is a change of scale: today the yard repairs vessels that fit its old docks, tomorrow it will be able to compete for those that so far went to Gdańsk or Germany. We wrote about this dock in September, when the dock tunnel was 70 per cent complete; now there is a date.

The company is also reorganising production to deliver new orders faster, and is looking for partners in logistics services for offshore wind, that is handling the ships and cargo connected with the wind farms that will pass through Świnoujście over the next decade.

Recycling: the third leg

The least known element is the Szczecin Ship Recycling Plant, co-owned by the Fund, which is preparing to dismantle vessels. In the European Union ships under member-state flags may be scrapped only at yards on the EU list, and Poland has none; most European tonnage goes to Turkey or, after a change of flag, to South Asia. The Szczecin plant, if it gains a place on the list, will be one of the few places on the Baltic where an owner can dispose of an old ship legally and nearby, and the yard can recover the steel. For a group that builds sections, repairs and wants to scrap, that closes the whole life cycle of a vessel.

A Szczecin that does not pretend to be Gdynia

The Fund's strategy is in essence an answer to the question of what to do with shipyards in a city that lost Stocznia Szczecińska and has no programme like Miecznik behind it. The answer is: do not build whole ships, but do what others will not or cannot, that is sections for the naval yard in Gdynia, structures for offshore wind, specialised vessels for public authorities, repairs of the largest ships in the port and the dismantling of those that reach the end. Each of these niches is small on its own; together they provide employment and a reason to invest in halls, a slipway and a dock.

There is one condition, and the Fund's president names it plainly: contracts on time and within budget, because companies financed on market terms do not have a state behind them to cover delays. Ratownik's bow block, due in Gdynia before the ship's launch in September 2027, will be the first public test of that condition.