Meyer Shipyards Papenburg

The Meyer Werft GmbH is one of the major German shipyards, headquartered in Papenburg at the river Ems. Founded in 1795 and starting with small wooden vessels, today Meyer Werft is one of world´s leading builders of luxury passenger ships.

The first cruise ship left the shipyard in 1985. In the following years all further cruise ships were built in worldwide largest roofed dry dock which was constructed in 1987. It was extended again in the years 1990/91 and is now 370 meters long, 101.5 meters wide and 60 meters high. The actual dock basin is 358 meters long and 39 meters wide.

Meyer Werft started construction of a second covered dock in the year 2000 (384 meters long, 125 meters wide and 75 meters high). The building was finished in 2002 and houses a dry dock measuring 362 x 45 meters. A range of new pre-fabrication halls were also built during this time. These include for example special production lines with very large laser cutting tables.

In December 2007 the second covered dry dock was extended by 120 meters to make room for even bigger cruise ships. Since then the dock is the largest shipbuilding hall and the building with the fifth largest usable space in the world.

I took the pictures during a tour through the official visiting center of the shipyard. Unfortunately you are not getting very close to the ships. Also it is hard to take pictures because of the glaring windows. The area with the laser cutting technology is not accessible. Nevertheless a very interesting sight.