WILLEMSTAD - Damen Shiprepair Curaçao has started the first phase to upgrade the entire yard. With an investment of two million guilders, the door of dock B has been completely overhauled.
According to Peter Luiten, general manager of Damen Shiprepair Curaçao, this important investment should be the go-ahead for a large-scale renovation program for the yard. The decision on the investment program for the yard will be made in a few weeks.
It is owned by the Curaçao government through CDM Holding and Damen leases the yard and is responsible for all operational activities there.
In anticipation of the approval of the investment program, Damen has tackled the door of Dok B. According to insiders, this investment could no longer be postponed because this meant that half of the yard was out of order.
Damen Shiprepair Curaçao is going through tough times. The company, which is part of the Damen Shipyards Group in the Netherlands, has had to lay off 78 of its nearly 300 employees due to disappointing performance. In addition, around 36 million euros must be invested into the company to keep it afloat.
Damen has been active on the island since 2016 and since 2017 the operator of the Dock, the ailing shipyard that was until then in the hands of the government. But Damen failed to make the company healthy again. The closure of the Isla refinery on the island, the international sanctions against Venezuela and the consequences of the COVID pandemic were among others to blame.
Last year, to make matters worse, one of Damen's two floating docks, the 'Curaçao', was damaged, so that it could only run at half power. The other dock, the 'Damen', has continuous defects, according to the Schuttevaer, a trade journal for, among other things, shipbuilding in the Netherlands.