Historic shipyard sets modern goals
Gdansk has far more land than it can use, and its facilities and equipment have not been updated since the Solidarity strike in 1980. Until last year, the workers and managers alike seemed more focused on restoring the yard to its past glory than creating ways to deal with tomorrow.
The shipyard, which is owned 40% by workers and 60% by the Gdansk province, had 17,500 shipyard workers in 1976; by 1994 there were 7,250, up from the all-time low of 5,500. There were no layoffs, but as business picked up in other yards, people left.
The Gdansk yard has orders for 21 ships worth $650 million, with other options that could push its total orders to $930 million. Rather than the Germans, who predominate the customers for ships at Gdynia and Szczecin, the Gdansk yard has many more buyers in Scandinavia, including a Finnish company which commissioned the nearly complete $70 million car ferry looming over the yard.
Gdansk's prominence in the Solidarity revolution gave it a certain political insulation, as it did the Ursus tractor factory. They were too hot to handle, too big to fail.
Nearly two-thirds of its customer base fell apart in 1990: the Soviet miliary and the Polish military. And new competitors for commercial customers entered the market.
After the 1980 strike and the imposition of martial law which outlawed Solidarity, the Gdansk yard was targeted for cutbacks, says Witold uylicz, today deputy commercial director. The yard was slated to be closed in 1988. And when the Solidarity government took over, there was euphoria followed by disillusionment in the salvation offer that went awry from Barbara Piasecki Johnson, a Polish emigrn and widow of one of the founders of the Johnson Wax fortune.
The original offer of $100 million plummeted to $5 million, uylicz says, as U.S. lawyers found they couldn't buy the land and realized the equipment and buildings were antique. "And maybe it should have been closed. But we kept it open. From their way of thinking, it shouldn't have worked - but the whole economy was like that." The foreigners, he says with some irony, just "didn't have enough imagination."
The result of adversities from friends and foes alike, however, was a "fortress mentality" at the Gdansk shipyard, uylicz says. Only recently, he says, have restructuring plans begun in earnest.
Under these plans, two of the six building sites are slated for sale or lease, along with other unneeded lands; offshore work is to be increased to cut down expenses once work in the slipways has begun; and the overall construction time should decrease from 18 months to a year under new goals.
Customers are advancing money to buy supplies and pay workers, but "risk guarantees is the problem," uylicz says. With civic code restructuring proposals in the works, the Gdansk sales chiefs such as uylicz are courting bankers in Germany, Austria and Norway to arrange financing.
"We are a very old shipyard," uylicz says. "But we are building modern ships."
The shipyard, which is owned 40% by workers and 60% by the Gdansk province, had 17,500 shipyard workers in 1976; by 1994 there were 7,250, up from the all-time low of 5,500. There were no layoffs, but as business picked up in other yards, people left.
The Gdansk yard has orders for 21 ships worth $650 million, with other options that could push its total orders to $930 million. Rather than the Germans, who predominate the customers for ships at Gdynia and Szczecin, the Gdansk yard has many more buyers in Scandinavia, including a Finnish company which commissioned the nearly complete $70 million car ferry looming over the yard.
Gdansk's prominence in the Solidarity revolution gave it a certain political insulation, as it did the Ursus tractor factory. They were too hot to handle, too big to fail.
Nearly two-thirds of its customer base fell apart in 1990: the Soviet miliary and the Polish military. And new competitors for commercial customers entered the market.
After the 1980 strike and the imposition of martial law which outlawed Solidarity, the Gdansk yard was targeted for cutbacks, says Witold uylicz, today deputy commercial director. The yard was slated to be closed in 1988. And when the Solidarity government took over, there was euphoria followed by disillusionment in the salvation offer that went awry from Barbara Piasecki Johnson, a Polish emigrn and widow of one of the founders of the Johnson Wax fortune.
The original offer of $100 million plummeted to $5 million, uylicz says, as U.S. lawyers found they couldn't buy the land and realized the equipment and buildings were antique. "And maybe it should have been closed. But we kept it open. From their way of thinking, it shouldn't have worked - but the whole economy was like that." The foreigners, he says with some irony, just "didn't have enough imagination."
The result of adversities from friends and foes alike, however, was a "fortress mentality" at the Gdansk shipyard, uylicz says. Only recently, he says, have restructuring plans begun in earnest.
Under these plans, two of the six building sites are slated for sale or lease, along with other unneeded lands; offshore work is to be increased to cut down expenses once work in the slipways has begun; and the overall construction time should decrease from 18 months to a year under new goals.
Customers are advancing money to buy supplies and pay workers, but "risk guarantees is the problem," uylicz says. With civic code restructuring proposals in the works, the Gdansk sales chiefs such as uylicz are courting bankers in Germany, Austria and Norway to arrange financing.
"We are a very old shipyard," uylicz says. "But we are building modern ships."
