Yesterday afternoon AmCham members had an exclusive opportunity to visit Damen Shiprepair & Conversion in the harbour of Rotterdam.
Damen Shiprepair & Conversion yards offer ship owners a comprehensive range of services, from normal dry dockings for scheduled maintenance or damage repair right up to extensive refit and conversion projects.
The afternoon started with a presentation on Damen by Ruud Haneveer and Mark Witjens whom gave us more insight on the standardised shipbuilding approach, known as The Damen Standard, that has become one of their fundamental core values. By building a wide variety of standard hulls for stock purposes, they can substantially reduce delivery times. However, these standardised vessels can be tailor-made with a wide variety of options. Every Damen ship is fine-tuned down to the last detail to meet specific customer requirements. An interesting detail is that Damen has 200 vessels always on stock.
After the presentations we put on our safety glasses and helmets and started the tour around the docks.
The location in Schiedam has three dry docks (one covered dry dock) and two floating docks at its disposal.
The afternoon was concluded with some nice drinks and bites at the restaurant, which allowed us to continue enjoying the impressive view of the ship subsea7 Seven Waves.
