GERMAN CREATOR OF THE LARGEST YACHT WENT BANKRUPT

Rendsburg shipyard Nobiskrug, famous for building the largest yacht for the special order of Russian billionaire Andrei Melnichenko, went bankrupt. The company filed a bankruptcy petition last Monday in the district court of Neumünster. According to Süddeutsche Zeitung journalists, the company named “critical events” in yacht construction industry as the main reason for insolvency, as well as the associated consequences for investment attractiveness and profitability.

The cancellation of many orders and the uncertainty of the development of the situation in the future caused the need to start bankruptcy proceedings.

At the same time, in the opinion of many experts, it is obvious that the reason for the bankruptcy of the shipyard was gross managerial mistakes made by the previous management of the enterprise.

After all, the market of this kind of yachts is in its prime, and the demand for them is enormous.

Last year, the company had to lay off 120 workers, which caused protests from unions accusing the owner of the company of neglecting the interests of people. Experts note that the current 330 employees who work at the shipyard are unlikely to find themselves out of work. Most likely, the company will be bought by one of the competitors.

The shipyard on the Kiel Canal, the specialty of which has always been the construction of luxury yachts over 60 meters in length, has built more than 750 vessels since its foundation in 1905. Melnichenko's eight-story mega-yacht, reaching almost 143 meters in length, has become the company's most famous masterpiece in recent years. Its cost is estimated at € 400 million.

The company Nobiskrug itself is part of the international shipbuilding group Privinvest.

It is chaired by Iskandar Safa, a French businessman of Lebanese descent. The group also includes the German naval shipyards in Kiel. The company noted that the parent company had invested about € 178 million in the shipyard in recent years.

The District Court has appointed Hendrik Gridman as an expert for the upcoming restructuring. This was reported by his Hamburg-based law firm Reimer. Gridman is considered to be the leading expert in the maritime industry in these procedures. In the near future, he will have to work out the options for getting the shipyard out of this situation. “Bankruptcy often means not the collapse of a company, but a chance to start without debts,” the expert told the German newspaper.