February the 15th, 2022 - Croatian shipyards might have been struggling significantly for the past few years, since long before the global coronavirus pandemic emerged and caused even more issues, but the Viktor Lenac shipyard has its hands full at the moment, mostly with the ''doing up'' of a yacht owned by no less than the Saudi royal family.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, docking capacities at the Viktor Lenac shipyard have been filled until the month of May, there are now more than 10 ships in that shipyard, and employment is extremely high, the Rijeka-based shipyard revealed.

Board member Sandra Uzelac said that all docks and berths were filled and that now, unlike in the previous half of the year, the Viktor Lenac shipyard's employment is high. Last year, he says, the business was affected by high freight rates, so shipowners used that time more for navigation than for overhaul, and the coronavirus pandemic also negatively affected it.

Therefore, it is expected that the Viktor Lenac shipyard's business roundup for the year 2021 will turn out to have been successful and with a profit, but less so than in 2020. On Thursday, a passenger ship - a luxury yacht which is 147 metres long, sailed into the Viktor Lenac shipyard for overhaul and refurbishment.

It is a large yacht owned by a foreign client, with which the Kostrena shipyard signed a contract for the overhaul and refurbishment worth more than 20 million euros. It is a yacht used by the Saudi royal family.

The complexity of the contracted works is also indicated by the fact that it is planned that the ship will remain in the Rijeka shipyard for one entire year, because the deadline for the execution of all of the works is 12 months.

According to Sandra Uzelac, these are very specific works, and several Croatian and foreign subcontractors will be engaged in order to get it all done. Similar, but smaller jobs of that kind have already been done at the Viktor Lenac shipyard, said Uzelac.

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May the 30th, 2021 - A large Rijeka investment has been planned as the Viktor Lenac shipyard puts a massive 40 million euro cash injection into a new dock for the turnover and renovation of larger vessels.

As Novac/Jozo Vrdoljak writes, the management of the Rijeka-based Viktor Lenac shipyard is preparing a serious Rijeka investment with an estimated value of around 35 million euros. Such an amount would be invested in the project of the reconstruction and upgrade of part of the floating dock to its Suezmax size, with whicn the existing Dock 11 would be replaced, the most significant dock in this overhaul shipyard.

The goal of replacing the existing Dock 11, with which Viktor Lenac generates about a third of its revenue, with a new floating dock is to better adapt to current market needs, meet energy efficiency requirements, protect the environment and reduce operating costs of the dock's management in general. The deadline for the completion of the dock and its commissioning is scheduled for the first quarter of 2023.

The new dock, which will be slightly longer and wider than the existing Dock 11, represents the capacity to accommodate ships up to Suezmax size. These are not complete investments because they are also expected in the arrangement of one shore connection, which, together with regular annual investments in production equipment in the next two to three years, will reach a value of about 40 million euros. Viktor Lenac plans to secure this amount with a long-term loan from HBOR and commercial banks in the amount of 28 million euros, with a target repayment period of 15 years, and the remaining 12 million euros would be secured by its own contribution from EBITDA and sale of the current Dock 11 in scrap iron.

If this Rijeka investment successfully comes to fruition, a section weighing around 9,000 tonnes would be ordered from Croatian shipyards, and the final connection would be done by Viktor Lenac's own workers, as was revealed by the president of the Viktor Lenac shipyard's management, Sandra Uzelac. She added that this Rijeka investment project would have the status of a dock in construction, which is considered to be new construction in the shipbuilding segment.

"This investment would enable us to enter a new market niche for certain types of ships that the shipyard hasn't been able to receive in its docks so far. Primarily this refers to the segment of LNG ships, which will come to the nearby LNG terminal in Omisalj, as well as the Port of Rijeka and other cargo ship traffic in the vicinity of Viktor Lenac, which will not be significantly larger than what we had before, but will open up the space for the overhaul and docking of ships coming to the LNG terminal and Rijeka, as well as ships of other clients which are a bit heavier and require a higher lifting capacity of the dock.

This would certainly be a nice story if this Rijeka investment is realised, and we believe we will complete it because we're including Croatian shipyards in the project, and providing ourselves with new and greater opportunities. We aren't worried about the price of steel at the moment and we're still doing calculations in order to get to the real budget we need for this investment with the help of HBOR and commercial banks,'' explained Sandra Uzelac.

The renovation of Dock 5

Last year, Viktor Lenac had investments worth a total of 30.4 million kuna, of which the largest amount was invested in the reconstruction of its docks. The biggest investment was in the renovation of Dock 5, which also needed to be done for a new five-year class certificate.

In 2020, Viktor Lenac implemented 70 different overhaul projects, five of which began at the end of the year and continued throughout January 2021. Of the total 70 projects, five were related to projects contracted with no less than the US Navy. At the beginning of 2020, the work on the Bruce C. Heezen and on the Yuma ships was completed. At the height of the pandemic here in Europe, Trenton was located at the Viktor Lenac shipyard, where work was nearing completion at the time, and the arrival of Carson City was postponed from March to April due to compliance with the ship's fourteen-day quarantine period. Back in December 2020, overhaul work began on the Yuma ship.

Uzelac says that the Viktor Lenac shipyard achieved good business results even in such difficult circumstances.

"Our cooperation with US Navy is stable, but we can't count solely on that. These are stable and excellent revenues, but we also have to generate revenues from the overhaul of merchant ships. In the overhaul business it is common to not contract jobs several months in advance, so it's difficult to predict employment and market movements. It's difficult to know what could happen. That continues to be the case especially now, with the consequences of the coronavirus pandemic on the global economy. However, some analysts predict that the overhaul market could be among the first to recover," Uzelac concluded.

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ZAGREB, 4 March, 2021 - The Viktor Lenac shipyard posted a net profit of HRK 34.6 million in 2020, which is 66.1% more than in 2019, according to an unaudited financial statement released on Wednesday by this dock, based in the municipality of Kostrena near Rijeka.

The company's total revenues fell 4.2% to HRK 306.2 million, and the expenditure decreased 11.2% to HRK 265.1 million on the year, according to the financial statement released on the Zagreb Stock Exchange (ZSE).

The dock's EBITDA came to HRK 73.6 million.

In 2020, there were 364 employees on the company's payroll and their average monthly wage was HRK 7,853.

(€1 = HRK 7.5)

The state of Croatian shipbuilding has been far from healthy over the last few years, with things reaching boiling point with the large Pula shipyard Uljanik, who saw its workers strike owing to not being paid. Rijeka's 3 Maj has also struggled endlessly, but as 3 Maj contracts its first vessel in over four years, and as the Viktor Lenac shipyard, also in Rijeka, has a cruiser coming to it for repairs early next year, could things slowly be heading in the right direction?

As Morski writes on the 30th of December, 2019, it isn't uncomming to see vessels belonging to Marella Cruises docked in Rijeka, and nobody bats an eyelid since these vessels are regular guests of the City of Rijeka during almost every season. This past season, Rijeka's residents saw the Marella Celebration cruiser, and they will get to see it once again next year.

However, early next year, more precisely on January the 6th, 2020, Rijeka's citizens will get to see the 243 metre long Marella Dream cruiser, which will be arriving not owing to pleasure but on business, at the Viktor Lenac shipyard for a very extensive overhaul.

As yet, the details of the deal struck between the aforementioned large cruise company and Rijeka's Viktor Lenac shipyard haven't been publicly revealed, but it has been pointed out that Viktor Lenac's expert workers are going to overhaul the vessel in order to see the condition of the ship and to ensure that their clientele receives the highest possible standard of service.

According to the portal Ships in Rijeka (Brodovi u Rijeci) from sources close to the Viktor Lenac shipyard, the ship will go to berth 10 and then after that, it will be moved to Dock 11.

Over 100 tonnes of steel (formwork, decks, tanks), the rudder, valves, the main engine, the ventilation system, formwork painting and other standard works are expected to take place at Viktor Lenac during 2020's maiden month, and the current deadline for the completion of the work on the vessel is February the 22nd, 2020.

The last overhaul of Marella Dream was done last year in Cadiz in Spain and lasted for twelve days in total, and the shipowner plans to sail this vessel by the year 2024.

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The word ''Croatian shipyard'' isn't bringing in the most positive of coverage of late.

Uljanik has dominated the press for several months, with its desperate workers even taking the streets in protest of the shipyard's management body. Losses are being recorded and with the state's hands tied to a certain degree, strategic partners are being desperately sought. Despite that, there may be light at the end of the tunnel for Croatian shipyards, as Uljanik completes the most expensive vessel to be made in Croatia, and the Viktor Lenac shipyard in Rijeka carries out maintenance for American vessels.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 19th of January, 2019, the USS Mount Whitney, a commander vessel, and its nearly three hundred crew members sailed to Rijeka yesterday. The Croatian shipyard ''Viktor Lenac'' has become their usual remodeling base, and this time the Americans will stay about a month and a half, which is the length of time the work on this war ship is scheduled for.

As Novi list reported, the American vessel will stay at the Croatian shipyard to undergo regular maintenance, with focus on drive groups and propulsion, as well as electrical systems of the ship.

This Rijeka-based Croatian shipyard expects to be able to get jobs on one or two other ships which make up the US Sixth Fleet by the summer, for which there is news that tenders will eventually be announced and published.

Such good deals are valuable, and the good cooperation the Croatian shipyard has with the US Navy is something that carries financial stability for Viktor Lenac. This good relationship proved to be the big business result of the year 2017 in which the last major upgrading of this sixth fleet vessel was undertaken. In the Martinšćica shipyard, they boasted an impressive record gain of 37 million kuna.

Results for last year, according to the so-called ''balance'' for the first nine months of 2018, are another story, since the Viktor Lenac shipyard had published huge losses of 11.9 million kuna by the end of September.

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As Morski writes on the 5th of January, 2019, the complete overhaul of Tito's "Galeb" ship is undoubtedly the largest projects thought up by the mayor of Rijeka, Vojko Obersnel, in the past few years. Will his critics stop him? Unlikely, but the cost might.

For years, Rijeka's longtime mayor Vojko Obersnel has been subject to a lot of understandable criticism for his buying and desire to maintain Tito's "Galeb", which has cost more than a million kuna to date, but those protesting Obersnel's to completely repair Galeb would typically shut up when told that the overhaul of Tito's former vessel would be largely financed by European Union funds.

After the official acknowledgment that this is really true came, there were no longer any real obstacles to a tender for the job. Obersnel's critics have mostly remained quiet, even if temporarily, and even some of the furniture from the ship has been renovated.

At the beginning of 2019, more precisely on the 3rd of January, a public tender was concluded for Galeb's renovation, and although they hoped from the City of Rijeka that there might be at least a few bids, only one bid arrived wanting the job of bringing Tito's ship back to life.

The City of Rijeka's administration were likely finding it difficult to come across at least one shipyard ready to take up this truly demanding job, the cost of which is estimated at approximately 27.6 million kuna. As the Fiuman.hr portal exclusively reports from a well-informed source, the only offer came from the Viktor Lenac shipyard, but they have set the cost of the forecast twice as high as initially expected. If their offer is accepted, it will cost about 60 million kuna to breathe new life back into Tito's Galeb.

The City of Rijeka now has two options in this situation. One of them is to secure the remaining 32 million kuna from their own sources, and the only realistic possibility for it is to take out a new loan, which must be approved by the City Council of the City of Rijeka, where Obersnel has, at least officially, no actual majority.

It's no secret that the City of Rijeka has been living on credit for years now, and at this moment, owing primarily to poor management of the city's budget, this amounts to as much as 277 million kuna. To briefly recall, Maribor in Slovenia was also once the proud owner of the title of European Capital of Culture, and for this reason the city almost suffered bankruptcy, and many well-informed individuals are afraid that a similar path is currently being taken by Rijeka, especially if a loan is taken out solely for the purpose of bringing Tito's vessel into the 21st century.

Rijeka's second option is to cancel the tender entirely, and given the huge difference between the forecasts and actual costs of the ship's overhaul, the announcement of a new tender is not reasonable and it is questionable whether or not, should that be the case, Galeb's overhaul would be completed by the end of 2020 as the current deadline is quite stretched.

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Click here for the original article by Zoran Zdelar for Fiuman.hr

A new majority owner for Rijeka's Viktor Lenac shipyard.

ZAGREB, August 11, 2018 - The Croatian Financial Services Supervisory Agency (HANFA), a regulator whose scope of activities cover the supervision of financial markets and financial services, has approved the offer for the Viktor Lenac shipyard's takeover by the Italian Palumbo company at a price of 9.26 kuna per share, the agency stated in a press release on Friday.

ZAGREB, May 17, 2018 - The Palumbo Group from Naples has been buying shares in the Viktor Lenac shipyard over the past few days. As of the end of last week, it owns 14.04% of the dock's shares, the Martinščica-based shipyard said on Wednesday.

April 2, 2018 - USNS Carson City joined its sister ship Trenton at the shipyard in Rijeka