Meyer Turku Investing Profits in its Shipyard

Coming off of three straight profitable years, Finnish shipbuilder Meyer Turku said it is using its profits to finance a 200 million euro ($237 million) investment program at its Turku shipyard.

The cruise ship builder reported its 2017 revenue was 807.7 million euros ($959 million) compared to 2016’s 787.5 million euros ($935 million). Net profit for the financial year rose from 26.2 million euros ($31.1 million) (3.3 percent of revenue) to 32.2 million euros ($38 million) (4 percent of revenue).

Meyer Turku delivered two ships in 2017, the first time in decades. In January the shipyard delivered LNG-powered fast ferry Megastar to Estonian shipping company Tallink and later in May delivered Mein Schiff 6, the fourth in a ship series for German owner TUI Cruises.

"These good figures give us an opportunity to prepare for the coming years and a growing international competition," said Jan Meyer, CEO of Meyer Turku. "We are using these profits to finance the large scale investments we urgently need to rebuild the Turku shipyard into a modern ship assembly factory and to train our personnel and to further grow our team of ship builders in Turku."

The shipbuilder said it has an investment program of 200 million euros ($237 million), including a new 1,200 ton goliath crane, a steel pretreatment and storage facility and several large scale IT system investments, all part of an effort to replace aging equipment and realize higher capacity and productivity.

The shipyard added it has also been actively recruiting new personnel; its headcount has grown from 1,614 at the end of 2016 to 1,854 by the end of 2017.

And with a long order book stretching into 2024, Meyer Turku expects it will have growing revenues in the years to come. Yet, due to the efforts and costs for the development of the shipyard, the profit margins will be lower but positive during this transition time.