November the 30th, 2020 – Tomislav Debeljak, the owner and president of the well known Croatian shipyard Brodosplit, has spoken about the effect the ongoing coronavirus pandemic has had on his business, and his expectations that more contracts for the construction of vessels, some of which will be global sensations, will continue to be concluded.
As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, Tomidlav Debeljak has stated that in the forthcoming period, Brodosplit will complete the previously contracted polar cruisers, and they’re busy constructing four coastal patrol boats that they contracted last year after the OOB-31 ”Omis” prototype successfully passed all of its testing.
”We’d like to thank the Croatian Government because, despite the pandemic, it found ways to finance the continuation of the construction of these vessels and they’ll be completed on time as a result of that. We also expect to conclude several more contracts for the construction of ships, some of which will be international sensations. After the announcement of the vaccine against SARS-CoV-2, the market came back to life and every day we have more and more inquiries, as well as updates on negotiations that were stalled due to the pandemic,” Debeljak added.
”Since the beginning of the pandemic, we’ve done everything in our power to preserve the health of Brodosplit’s employees and maintain the production process. Although it’s constantly hanging over our heads, closing the shipyard isn’t an option and we’re actively doing everything to avoid that. That’s why we underook virus protection actions even before anything like that was officially organised in our area.
The entire DIV group is operating positively and has more than 1.8 billion kuna in capital and reserves, making it the group of the largest employers in Croatia, as well as being among the largest exporters. In the first three quarters of 2020, at the group level, we realized 540 million kuna in exports.
Profitable shipbuilding, which we deal with, shows its results in revenues, ie the value of an individual ship and the percentage of the Croatian component that is built into it. In our case, it’s at least 70 percent, in which the largest part is Croatian intelligence (design), Croatian knowledge and ability (construction), Croatian subcontractors and suppliers, energy, and also the amount of financing costs that remain within Croatia,” Tomislav Debeljak explained.
”So far and for the most part, these export operations have been monitored by HBOR, with whose help we’ve managed to position ourselves as an unmissable player out on the global market in the segment of medium-sized polar cruisers, which has suffered much less during this crisis than the shipyards which deal with mega cruisers have. Arrangements are already being made for polar cruisers, they’ll be the first to set off in the spring with travel, and this immediately aroused greater interest from customers, so we expect to continue filling Brodosplit’s order book.
We also have our own fleet of boats, so, with the Katina luxury yacht, we’ve still managed to successfully achieve 126 days of charter throughout the past 12 months, regardless of the coronavirus crisis.
We’re building a technologically advanced ship for polar expeditions called ”Ultramarine”, contracted with Quark Expeditions from the USA, it’s the most expensive polar cruiser contracted in Croatia so far, and a job worth more than 100 million euros. We’re also participating in offshore construction projects. We’ve come to an agreement with the Greek AVAX-on the construction of a steel structure for the Ston Bridge and the Prapratno Viaduct. This strengthens our position as a European shipyard which is fully capable of building extremely demanding steel structures,” Tomislav Debeljak stated.
More than 2400 employees work for Brodosplit each and every day. The company has many young, ambitious people who have enormous amounts of energy and a true and deep love for shipbuilding and Brodosplit has stated how it as a company enjoys working with them.
”We’re proud of our successes and we’re looking forward to the future with optimism,” concluded Tomislav Debeljak, Brodosplit’s owner.
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