Mein Schiff 2 Floats Out at Meyer Turku

Posted on 1 June, 2018 by Spacejunkie2

The Mein Schiff 2 touched water for the first time today at the Meyer Werft shipyard ahead of her 2019 delivery.

Delivery is set for spring 2019, and Meyer Turku said in a statement that the “timetable for the construction of the ship shows how Turku shipyard has already been ramping up the production volume to meet the increasing demands from the order book.”

“Our block production capacity is already up on the level with a previous high from 2010, when the shipyard was building Allure of the Seas. Ramping up the production at the same time as we are implementing an investment program of 200 million euros has not been a simple task. Still, as the saying at the shipyard says, if it was simple, anybody could do it and that would not be good either,” said CEO Jan Meyer, in a written statement.

The float out of New Mein Schiff 2 marks the beginning of the final stage of the ship’s construction. After the weekend she will be berthed at the outfitting pier of the shipyard, where she will be finalized for delivery.

“Our new Mein Schiff 1 has successfully completed her first cruises and has been very well received by our guests. Our new generation of ships meets our expectations completely. We are looking very much forward to taking with new Mein Schiff 2 a sister ship into service very soon,” added Wybcke Meier, CEO of TUI Cruises

Meyer Turku Expanding and Hiring

Posted on 17 May, 2018 by Spacejunkie2

With an order book stretching into 2024, Finnish shipyard Meyer Turku is investing €200 million in infrastructure improvements, new technologies, an expanded design team, and a sustained staffing ramp up for at least the next five years, a company spokesman said Wednesday.

A new 120-meter crane looms over the shipbuilder’s drydock, where crews are assembling TUI Cruises’ Mein Schiff 2 ahead of a 2019 delivery.

When the big blue crane goes online this summer, it will be able to lift 1,200 tons — twice that of the yard’s current lifter.

Pieces of Costa’s Smeralda sit in open-sided warehouses within earshot of construction for new steel cutting lines. Half of a 500-meter hall is ripped apart while the new technology is installed.

Crews in blue coveralls craft steel sheets for Smeralda’s superstructure in the other side of the hall. When the plasma-cutting robots are ready the crews will move over and this side will be ripped up. There’s a joke around the yard that shipbuilding has gotten much easier: Robots do all the work while people are simply there to make them comfortable.

That’s far from true, of course. There’s plenty of people work to be done. There were some grumbles when the machines took over obvious jobs — ten men sandblasting is now two pushing buttons to start and stop their mechanical colleagues — but most humans are being retrained for other, more engaging work. Furthermore, Meyer Turku is on a hiring tear, looking to grow their in-house staff of around 1,900 to 4,000, said Tapani Mylly, the yard’s communications manager. It’s not an easy task as the working language at Meyer Turku is Finnish, one of the world’s less common tongues.

Mein Schiff 2 at Meyer Turku

German shipbuilder Meyer Werft bought the facility from struggling Korean-owner STX Finland in 2014, acquiring 100 percent ownership a year later. With seven generations of shipbuilding know how the Meyer family has turned Turku’s fortune’s around considerably. “The previous owner was not interested in making investments,” Mylly said. “A family-owned company is able to make decisions very fast — around the breakfast table. … When decisions need to be made there is no need to contact Korea.”

The yard is also adding steel treatment facilities, more panel lines and storage areas, further IT and automation, and enhanced in-house design capabilities to reduce reliance on subcontractors. That said, about 800 subcontractor companies work on each ship — so many that the city of Turku is considering zoning an industrial park outside the shipyard for them.

If it’s built, Meyer Turku CEO Jan Meyer would see his subcontractors each day when bicycling into work from the city centre.

Mein Schiff 6 Christened

Posted on 3 June, 2017 by Spacejunkie2

TUI Cruises welcomed the Mein Schiff 6 into its fleet with a Thursday night ceremony in the German port of Hamburg.

Latvian organist Iveta Apkalna christened the ship.

The Mein Schiff 6 left the Altona cruise terminal around 9 p.m. on Thursday night and slowing sailed up the Elbe to Elbphilharmonie (concert hall), where it positioned itself for the evening’s music programming, including a custom symphony composed just for the christening.

The music show was complimented by a light show, with the Meyer-Turku-built ship being the center piece.

Wybcke Meier, CEO of TUI Cruises, explained: “The Elbphilharmonie provides extraordinary experiences, and at TUI Cruises we strive to do the same. For us it was important to design an event that reflects these shared values. So even with the Elbe between them, the Elbphilharmonie and the Mein Schiff 6 became one.”