In Italy, the world's largest designer of cruise ships, Fincantieri, is also building new bridges at record speed.

The Italian shipbuilding business is still doing relatively well, but bridges and other structures are a welcome opportunity for diversification for Fincantieri boss Giuseppe Bono.

Tobias Piller

Editor in Business.

  • Follow I follow

Could the construction of bridges and bridge girders be an opportunity to secure employment in Mecklenburg shipyards that are currently in bankruptcy?

"We now have to think more broadly about the skills of steel processing in the shipyards," says IG Metall Coast District Manager Daniel Friedrich.

"If the shipyards can help to renew the infrastructure in Germany, all sides could win, a win-win situation." stabilize so that we can continue to build ships in the future".

Excellence in rebuilding

The Fincantieri shipyard group, known for its cruise ships, with eight shipyards in Italy and a further ten outside the home country, has used the reconstruction of the collapsed Genoa motorway bridge to diversify towards steel bridge construction. With 92 firm shipbuilding contracts and 18 options totaling seven annual 2020 sales, this diversification is not born out of necessity. For the Fincantieri Group Managing Director Bono, there is a management principle in this term. When he took over the management of the then purely state-controlled shipbuilder in 2002, there was mainly one customer.

In the meantime, 20 cruise companies and brands are among the customers of the cruise ships alone. The business with other ship divisions was also further developed. Fincantieri now also builds frigates for the US Navy in an American shipyard. The company, which is now listed on the stock exchange, currently employs around 21,000 people, with a further 60,000 jobs at suppliers in Italy alone.

After the collapse of the motorway bridge in Genoa, Fincantieri and her boss were among those motivated precisely to make up for the national shame with a top-level reconstruction effort. The Genoa-born star architect Renzo Piano, who worked for his home town free of charge with his architectural office, had a particularly time-saving plan: while 18 new pillars were being concreted, the 19 bridge girders were being built at the same time, which were then lifted and anchored with cranes . Fincantieri acquired a disused steel construction company in Valeggio south of Lake Garda to expand its capacities, otherwise two of the group's own shipyards were used for the work. Thirteen months after the old bridge was blown up, the new, 1067 meter long structure was inaugurated on August 3, 2020.

A ship baptism at dizzy heights

“Anyone who builds ships has experience in welding large components.

After all, ships are also complex objects that require precise dimensions,” says Vito Cardella, plant manager of the metal construction company in Valeggio.

The floor of the bridge girders of Genoa is similar to a ship's hull - this is how Renzo Piano designed the bridge girders for Genoa.

Special systems are only required for other types of steel bridges, for a few million euros.

And there is no such thing as screwing bridge parts together on ships.

The experts at Fincantieri emphasize that the shipyards are used to tight schedules.

After all, the first cruises are sold by the shipping companies long before the ship is christened, which is why the unpunctual handover of ships is subject to contractual penalties.