Lloyd Yard

The Lloyd Shipyard

The Lloyd Yard

The Lloyd Yard was founded at the south end of the New Harbour in Bremerhaven in 1862 as a workshop for Norddeutsche Lloyd (NDL). Its first period of prosperty was between 1880 and 1890, when the NDL ordered its ships of so called “river class” (Elbe, Ems, Lahn etc.)The Bremerhaven repair company had to adapt constantly to the growing ships and the growing number of vessels in NDL's passenger fleet. For this reason, they moved to the current location in the Kaiserhafen at the northern end of the port.

The first dock basin was created in 1900. Operations were continuously expanded and modernised. A second dry dock followed. The yard cope with the following years in the first half of the twentieth century with all their problems. After the Second World War, the yard survived by carrying out orders for the US military forces. Since the 1950s the Lloyd yard is known as a repair yard for all types of ships and customers from all over the world. At the beginning of the 1970s, the yard was modernised again. This meant that the yard was well prepared for the global competition of the 1970s and 1980s. In the middle of the 1980s it was taken over by the Bremer Vulkan AG and earned itself world wide a reputation as "Lloyd Werft Bremerhaven GmbH" with conversion work on big ships such as the QUEEN ELIZABETH 2 or the NORWAY.

The yard also survived a crisis in the mid-1990s, when the Bremer Vulkan concern went into liquidation. With new investors and a new concept, the yard managed to stabilise its position. Today the Lloyd Yard is world leader in the speedy completion and conversion of high-tech passenger vessels.

Reference:
- http://www.lloydwerft.com/d/ueberblick/index.html
--Stegmann, Siegfried. Die Lloyd Werft. Von der Werkstatt zum großen Reparaturbetrieb. Langen-Debstedt. 2000.

Picture: Dirk Peters