Szczecin's Wulkan yard shifts from landlord to builder as production reaches 85 per cent of revenue

From industrial park to shipyard

For years the assets of the former Szczecin shipyard operated as an industrial park. The company made them available to contractors in the sector without building vessels itself. In 2021 the park was renamed Stocznia Szczecińska Wulkan, and the years since have taken it from site landlord to producer.

The yard is owned by Fundusz Rozwoju Spółek, a state development fund that exercises ownership supervision and finances the changes carried out by the company's management. In 2025 the fund injected 240 million zloty into the shipbuilding sector, of which 170 million went towards completing a floating dock.

– Stocznia Szczecińska Wulkan is today a shipyard rather than an industrial park. It builds its own vessels and is entering markets where it was not present three years ago – said Aleksandra Skibniewska, President of Fundusz Rozwoju Spółek.

Four orders in parallel

The largest order by value is a floating dock with a lifting capacity of 24,000 tonnes for the Gryfia ship repair yard. The investment, worth about 240 million zloty, is nearing completion and the dock is due to enter service in July 2027.

The first of the current orders was a buoy tender for the Maritime Office, contracted in April 2025. The third strand is the bow section of the submarine rescue ship ORP Ratownik, and the fourth is equipment for offshore wind turbine foundations for the Chinese company Dajin Offshore. That contract is on commercial terms, and according to the yard the volume of work for partners in the offshore sector is growing year on year.

A first defence contract

The agreement with PGZ Stocznia Wojenna to build the bow section of ORP Ratownik was signed on 26 May 2026 and is the first defence contract in the Szczecin company's history. The section measures 24 metres in length and 26 metres in height, weighs more than 1,000 tonnes, and will be transported from Szczecin to Gdynia in June 2027.

Entering the defence market required a licence for production for defence purposes. The proceedings took several months and were successful, and the yard is preparing its infrastructure for further orders of this kind.

– Today we are carrying out a joint undertaking with PGZ Stocznia Wojenna, and I assume that Ratownik is the beginning rather than the end of that cooperation. We are counting on Szczecin taking part in orders for the Navy – said Aleksandra Skibniewska.

The statement comes as several Polish naval programmes move into delivery and domestic yards compete for a share of the supply chain. Ratownik itself, built by PGZ Stocznia Wojenna, is due to be handed over to the Polish Navy at the end of 2029.

The industrial park stays

The change of model does not mean the end of the earlier formula. Around 70 companies still operate on the yard's site, carrying out shipbuilding work and steel structures for offshore projects. Wulkan itself employs about 300 people, and close to 2,000 work there in total including partner firms.

That figure matters for the region, because it shows that the site of the former shipyard remains the largest concentration of shipbuilding skills in Szczecin, whoever is formally delivering a given contract.