 |
| Mick Holding, CFO of Grand Bahama Shipyard |
Grand Bahama Shipyard Ltd. repaired its first big cruise ship nearly seven years ago, not long after it started operating in Freeport, Grand Bahama, with a colossal floating dry dock.
Since then, it has been in an aggressive growth mode. It now repairs and services more cruise ships per year than any shipyard in the world, according to the facility’s chief financial officer, Mick Holding. It has two floating dry docks and up to 800 workers. Over the past two years, it has been “operating at virtually full capacity,” and it will continue to do so in 2008, said Holding. Next year’s schedule includes 20 cruise ships. One of the facility’s most impressive features is a 985-foot-long floating dry dock costing $42 million: It’s the biggest in the hemisphere, Holding said.
To keep up with increasing demand and to attract new types of customers, the shipyard in 2007 is spending $20 million to create new dockside work areas and double its steel repair facilities. Most significantly, the shipyard has budgeted $50 million for a third dry dock – as soon as a suitable one can be found.
The objective is to attract increasing numbers of cargo vessels, tankers and, in particular, a new market the shipyard is attracting – off-shore oil rigs and support vessels. “There is insufficient shipyard capacity in the Gulf of Mexico to accommodate the current demand (for such work). So what we are looking to do is to break into that market,” Holding said.
Critical to those plans is a third dry dock, he said. “Our intention is to acquire a third dock as big as the present No. 2 dock and then extend our No. 2 dock to take the latest generation of cruise ships,” Holding explained. A market is obviously there, he observed. “We are at a transshipment hub in Freeport for container ships and tankers and other large vessels.”
“Recently, the shipyard placed a $4 million order for two cranes, which will be operating by year’s end. And it ‘significantly expanded’ its marketing and sales efforts,” Holding said.
Originally constructed for $70 million, the shipyard has spent an additional $30 million since then to increase “capacity and capabilities.” This included putting its second and biggest dry dock into operation in March, 2002, Holding related. “That was the motor of growth, and we grew from $11 million revenue in 2001 to over $70 million in 2005. We increased almost seven fold.”
 |
Photo by W. P. Berry
The Grand Bahama Shipyard makes Freeport an important location on the eastern seaboard for vessel maintenance, with its facilities capable of handling some of the largest vessels in the world. |
Freeport has benefited, too, with the shipyard pumping $45 to $50 million annually into the economy, Holding estimates.
The shipyard’s rising star owes much to Freeport’s status as a major international shipping hub with a deep-water port and container facility. In addition, major cruise ship ports are located in Miami and Ft. Lauderdale, just a few hours steaming distance way.
While ships of all types now visit the shipyard, it originally was conceived to service the region’s booming cruise ship industry. Carnival Corp and Royal Caribbean own 40 percent of the shipyard, and Grand Bahama Port Authority, a private entity, has a 20 percent stake. Shipyard executives, however, realized from that start that cruise ships alone would provide insufficient work to sustain the shipyard year around. Accordingly, Holding said, they turned their attention toward working on ships other than passenger vessels.
The decision to put a shipyard in Grand Bahama dates to the early 1990s. At the time, the Caribbean’s cruise ship industry was taking off, and cruise ship companies realized they needed a repair and maintenance facility “in their own backyard,” Holding related. A feasibility study he helped prepare, while an executive at Britain’s venerable A&P Group, recommended a shipyard for Freeport: It was, after all, just 100 miles from Miami. “The only place better (than Freeport) would be Florida itself. Can you imagine ever building a shipyard in southern Florida? It’s never going to happen?” Holding said.
Holding’s trajectory to the shipyard was not as well planned. In 2001, he moved to the facility from a top position at A&P Group – due entirely to a string of coincidences triggered by the Sept. 11 terror attacks. After the attacks, he said he cancelled a vacation in Dubai, deciding it might be safer to visit Freeport, where a friend lived.
Coincidentally, his friend’s next-door neighbor was the managing director of Grand Bahama Shipyard. He offered Holding a job – and after some initial reluctance, Holding accepted it. The two men had known each other in Britain when they worked for rival companies. “He wanted somebody who knew the industry inside and out,” Holding said. Today his office is steps away from the dry docks and bustling shipyard.
“All of the senior managers in the shipyard are very experienced, having worked in the industry in various parts of the world. And many could tell a similar tale of what led them to Grand Bahama,” Holding said.
Taking visitors around the shipyard and past mammoth ships resting incongruously in their dry docks, Holding observed that “most people who come into the shipyard find it absolutely fascinating, but we are never going to create this as a tourist attraction.
“I think if we did, we could probably make a lot of money out of it,” he chuckled.
|
