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She has already seen many a ship christening, says Flensburg's Lord Mayor Simone Lange (SPD) on Wednesday morning in the cold hangar of FSG.
But this one is the first keel-laying she takes part in.
A one-euro coin is attached to a pallet, then the crane lowers a 13-meter-wide and 50-tonne floor segment onto it.
It is the first component for a new Ro-Ro ferry in which trucks and cars drive in on one side and out on the other.
“We fought for this keel laying,” says Lange.
Flensburg's Lord Mayor Simone Lange (SPD) laying the keel of a new RoRo ferry at the FSG shipyard
Source: Olaf Preuß
The ceremony at the FSG shipyard, which was founded in 1872, is special in several respects: It is the last keel-laying of this disastrous year for German shipbuilding - and the first new building at FSG after the bankruptcy this summer.
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Ironically, the colorful entrepreneur Lars Windhorst, whose investment fund Tennor has owned the shipyard since 2019, is setting an example for the dawn of the industry: he almost ordered the ro-ro ferry himself through his company IVP Ship Invest, for delivery in April 2022.
Where and for which shipping company the cargo ferry will operate in the future is still completely open - unusual for the construction of such a special ship, which is usually adapted to its area of operation.
But Windhorst, who among other things is a major investor in the Berlin Bundesliga club Hertha BSC, had promised the Flensburgers that the shipyard owned by Tennor should have a future.
For new customers, on the other hand, you need references at the shipyard, such as the ship that has just been keeled.
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"Lars Windhorst really enjoyed this business, he is deeply involved here," says Philipp Maracke, the new shipyard manager who has been in office since November, to WELT.
Around 380 permanent employees are working at the shipyard again after the bankruptcy, previously it was around 650.
As strange as the constellation at FSG may seem, the new construction of the RoRo ferry and the option of a sister ship are an important signal for the industry in Germany.
According to the FSG, the order has a total volume of 140 million euros.
The value of incoming orders in the civil German marine shipbuilding sector has fallen by 80 percent this year, the industry association VSM WELT announced on request.
Last year it was around 2.1 billion euros.
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It is uncertain how many of the currently around 18,000 jobs will remain at the German shipyards after the pandemic.
Thousands of shipbuilders have been on short-time work for months.
The setback for the German ocean-going shipbuilding industry is mainly due to the fact that cruise ships contribute a particularly high proportion to the added value - especially at Meyer Werft in Papenburg and its subsidiary Neptun Werft in Rostock-Warnemünde and at the three locations of MV Werften in Wismar , Rostock-Warnemünde and Stralsund.
"Germany and Europe were able to successfully decouple themselves from the negative trend in world shipbuilding that has been going on since 2010," says Reinhard Lüken, General Manager of the VSM.
Papenburg "stretches" the order book
The focus on highly complex market segments was the key to this impressive success.
With Covid-19, this dynamic has now taken a complete turnaround.
"The collapse of one of the most profitable market segments in the maritime economy, cruise tourism, surpasses the worst scenarios of any risk analyst," says Lüken.
Meyer Werft is “expanding” its order book for nine sea cruise ships from 2023 to the end of 2025. This means that two instead of three cruise ships will be built in Papenburg each year.
In addition, there are two current orders for river cruise ships from Neptun.
What this means for the workforce - there are currently around 3,600 permanent shipbuilders working in Papenburg and around 700 in Warnemünde - the shipyard management wants to negotiate with the IG Metall union and the works councils at the locations from next year onwards.
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The company already let fixed-term contracts expire this year.
After all, Meyer Werft did not lose an order due to cancellations by shipping companies.
The situation at MV Werften is far more dramatic.
In 2016, the Malaysian tourism and gaming group Genting took over the three large shipyards in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania from the Russian investor Vitaly Jussufow.
The shipyards, which were then called Nordic Yards, were threatened with bankruptcy due to a lack of orders.
Now the company is threatened with extinction again, with currently around 3400 employees.
MV Werften, owned by Genting, had developed an ambitious program for the construction of large, medium-sized and small cruise ships, including the new "Global Class" with a capacity of up to 9500 passengers and a crew of 2500, especially for the Chinese market.
Never in the history of seafaring has a ship been designed for so many people.
Before the pandemic, the largest cruise ships had a maximum of around 7,000 passengers and a crew of 2,500 on board.
The first of the “Global” ships from MV Werften has been in Wismar for more than a year for completion, but work on it has been suspended for months.
Genting has provided 57 million euros for the completion of the ship, but a federal guarantee is still outstanding.
New build program for naval vessels
In autumn, the federal government had already granted MV Werften a loan advance of 193 million euros from the Corona rescue fund.
Another 400 million euros in federal aid are under discussion.
The prospects for MV Werften in the cruise ship market and the economic situation of the parent company Genting are likely to be decisive for this.
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At FSG in Flensburg, however, the management wants to go on the offensive after the keel was laid on Wednesday - not only with civilian ships, but also with naval ships again after a few years of interruption.
“In the coming years, the German Navy will have an intensive new build program, especially for the supply and support ships,” says shipyard manager Maracke.
"Tankers, tenders, dropships, minesweepers, we can build that and more."
FSG has a long tradition in the construction of naval ships, among other things the current operational group supplies of the German Navy come from Flensburg.
In the past decade, however, FSG had primarily focused on the production of RoRo ferries; in terms of tonnage built, the company is the world market leader in this segment.
The former shipyard owner, the Norwegian holding company Siem Industries, had miscalculated when building so-called RoPax ferries.
In addition to goods, these ships also transport passengers on longer tours; they are more complex than RoRo ferries.
Siem Industries sold FSG to Windhorst's investment fund Tennor in 2019.
With the bankruptcy of this year, the contaminated sites including the RoPax ferries have been stripped off.
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Above all, individual pieces or small series of RoRo ferries will be FSG's core business in the coming years, says Maracke.
"Our trademark will again be 'green' technology, hydrologically optimized hulls and the most modern, energy-efficient drives."
Ships that are powered with deep-cooled, liquefied natural gas (LNG) will be built again in the future, as will RoPax ferries.
Individual items such as research ships should also be part of the portfolio of the "new" FSG.
The first orders from external customers are expected soon for RoRo ferries, explains Maracke, explaining the new optimism at the shipyard: “We are in advanced talks with two potential customers.
We hope for a deal in the first quarter of 2021. "