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Poland Shipbuilding
Polish shipbuilding expanded rapidly in the 1960s and
1970s,
spurred by the Soviet drive to become a maritime
superpower. In
the 1980s, the industry included six shipyards, twenty-one
equipment factories, and three research and development
centers,
altogether employing about 57,000 people. In that decade,
Poland
became the fifth largest producer of ships in the world,
exporting most of its products to the Soviet Union. Some
1,000
plants all over the country supplied materials to the
shipbuilding industry. At the end of the 1980s, however,
the
industry suffered greatly from drastic reduction in orders
from
the Soviet Union and other customers, the loss of
government
subsidies in the midst of production, and a rapid rise in
domestic material costs for ships already contracted.
Nevertheless, the shipbuilding firms were able to attract
many
Western licenses, and they retained a highly skilled labor
force.
If modernized and restructured, the industry had the
potential to
significantly accelerate its production of modern ships,
including fishing vessels, factory ships, trawlers, car
ferries,
container vessels, roll on-roll off ships, and tankers.
The wellequipped Gdynia Shipyard was capable of building very
large bulk
cargo ships, but it operated at only 30 percent of
capacity in
1991. Large new contracts were expected to more than
double that
level of production by 1994, however. In 1992 it seemed
probable
that the shipyard's very high debt would be eased by a
two-step
transition, first into a partnership with the State
Treasury and
ultimately into a private enterprise. In 1991 the Ministry
of
Industry completed a restructuring program for the entire
shipbuilding industry in cooperation with Western experts.
Data as of October 1992
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