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Volharding Shipyards
Volharding Shipyards, which has its
administrative headquarters in
Westerbroek, is one of the large
groups that are typical of the structure
of the Dutch shipbuilding industry.
Like most Dutch yards, this group,
or rather the shipyards belonging to it,
can look back on a long history, which
“somehow began with the construction
of barges for shipping peat”. With this
impressive tradition, it has acquired a
deep-seated expertise and quiet selfconfidence
that is clearly evident in all
its activities.
The first reliable report on shipbuilding
activity in this group dates
from 1768. It refers to the construction
of a barge “tjalk” (single-masted
flat-bottomed coastal craft) in Foxhol
that was given the unusual name “Het
Blote Hol” for an owner in Groningen.
It is also established that in 1919 the
brothers GJF and GJ Bodewes set up
a shipyard in Foxhol under their surname
at this old shipbuilding site to
which the present company can be
directly traced. In 1955, the brothers
established a second shipyard a
few hundred metres away. In order
to keep the two facilities separate,
the new yard was given the name
Gruno, while the other operated from
then on as Volharding. In 2001, after
acquiring Frisian Shipyard, the company
gained its present name Volharding
Shipyards. After several changes
in the management, always within
the family, and a reorganisation in
1992, a little later Geert Jan Bodewes
took over at the head of the company
as majority shareholder and general
manager.
The yard founded by the Bodewes
brothers initially built inland waterway
vessels and tugs. Later, it produced
coastal motor ships and in particular
fishing vessels. It also built its
first special-purpose vessels in the
late 1980s. The first of these, the 74m
long, 3,800 gt twin-screw ferry “Grand
Manan V”, was built in the context of
a joint venture with Conoship International
and Shipyard Niestern Sanders
for the transport ministry of the Canadian
province New Brunswick. The
multipurpose research ship “Zirfaea”
for the Dutch transport ministry, also
Shipyard portrait
The “Beluga Resolution” –
a newbuilding of Volharding Shipyard
On successful course with wide product range
Volharding Foxhol with the ferry newbuilding “Grand Manan V”
built in cooperation with Conoship
International, followed in 1993. This
vessel is deployed off the Dutch coast
and in the North Sea continental shelf
area. In its next stage of development,
the yard delivered two ethylene tankers
for Reliance Industries (Mumbai,
India) in cooperation with the German
company LGA. “Precisely this new
type was a great challenge for us on
account of its complexity. But we succeeded,”
it is still recalled today not
without pride. The cooperation with
Conoship was ended on a friendly
basis in 2001, as Volharding had
meanwhile established its own design
department.
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