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when you have a steel designer working on
the midship section and steel elements, and
a mechanical engineer designing machine
areas, etc. They will make room for areas
that are necessary for their work, but nobody
is overseeing the big picture and overall
solutions.”
The following year, 1996, Deltamarin set
a record by receiving four orders within
a week. One of these was for a tanker for
Stolt-Nielsen at the INMA shipyard in Italy
and three for German shipyards: a cruise ship
at Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft (HDW), a
ro-pax ship at Schichau Seebeckwerft and a
tanker at Lindenau. European shipyards were
hoarding orders for fear of their subsidies
ending.
“It was a pretty hectic week,” said Björkman
in an interview for the Turun Sanomat.
Björkman believed that Finnish shipyards
were strong competitors in bidding after the
subsidy decisions. “It helps that many of our
European competitors can’t respond to the
delivery times of the shipyards.” He added,
“It’s a sign of trust that the shipyards INMA
and Lindenau hired us again after previous
projects. Our activities abroad have increased
significantly because we haven’t had much
cooperation with the biggest domestic
shipyard in the past couple of years.”
The Finnish government had recently
decided on its subsidies for shipyards,
on which Björkman commented: “Finnish
shipyards have great chances to get orders.
It’s all up to them. Many other shipyards in
the world can’t respond to the delivery times,
which is an advantage for Finnish shipyards.”
Towards the end of the 1990s, shipbuilding
saw an enormous spike in sales. There
was more work to be done than there were
workers.
Deltamarin’s current Managing Director
Janne Uotila remembers this boom well, having
started for the first time working for Deltamarin
in 1997: “It was a bit of a coincidence that
I got into shipbuilding. I applied for a job
in Deltamarin’s subsidiary and got in. An
economic boom was just about to start. Turku
shipyard had received large orders and
Deltamarin also got its share of them and was
increasing its workforce. It was a great time.”
Interviewed for the Finnish Länsi-Suomen
Sanomat newspaper, Matti Lietepohja, the
then director of Deltamarin’s Rauma office,
said that Deltamarin has even had to turn
down customers. “The two-vessel Eagle
project by Kvaerner Masa-Yards will keep the
industry overheated for at least a year. After
that, we hope that the situation plateaus. Still,
all signs point to a bright future.”
Deltamarin was solidly profitable. The
Janne Uotila,
Managing Director of
Deltamarin Ltd