Welcome to La Ciotat!
This giant shipyard is situated on the south of France's Mediterranean coast
and the caters to 1/7 of the world's super yacht fleet. But it wasn't always
that way. This shipyard once built massive oil and gas
carrying super tankers and the shipyard was almost lost forever after it closed
in the 1980s. Shipbuilding here dates back to the 1500s with the building of
small fishing vessels but in the 19th century Louis Benét the son of a wealthy
ship owner from La Ciotat took over a small sailboat shipyard and turned it
into a modern company as a savvy businessman Benét brought engineers and
propulsion systems from England and in 1836 launched the first French steamship
in the Mediterranean 'Le Phocéen I', in 1847 La Ciotat shipyards launches la
Bonaparte the first steamship with a propeller and an Iron hull in the
Mediterranean. But in the years that followed and industrial crisis leads
Louis Benét to sell his company to the national courier. Over the next 100 years
the shipyard would continue to grow and change hands and hence change names many
times
The shipyard would build larger and more complex ships and in turn the shipyard
would continue to grow in size until 320,000 tonne
super tankers would be constructed here unfortunately
in 1978 the oil crisis plus competition from Asia led to downsizing production
focused on oil tankers the repairs of gas carries also towards repairs of
large vessels. In 1987 the last ship built in la Ciotat is launched, named
Monterrey. On the 31st of July 1988 the shipyard closes down locking the
Monterrey still docked inside. And the history of the shipyard could have ended
right there however 105 former employees fought to save the
shipyard and made deals with the local government and eventually was
underwritten to reopen the shipyard and in 2000 that's exactly what happened
shipyard reopened so the shipyard is renamed La Ciotat Shipyards, a name that
remains to this day in the following 20 years La Ciotat has turned into one of the
foremost refit shipyards for yachts and Mega Yachts in the world. In order to
adapt the facilities of the yard to cater for super yachts a number of changes
needed to be made they had to reduce the 335 meter drydock down to 200 meters. 335
meters was too large for even the largest super yacht. The only option was to
shorten the dry dock. The gate used to be right out there the drydock was 335
meters long so obviously draining out that much much water
is not economically viable. So what they did is they took the gate floating gate
and they moved it a hundred and thirty-five meters shorter and they made
a 200 meter drydock out of it, big enough for even the biggest super yachts
of today
also the addition of a 2,000 ton synchro lift which caters for smaller super
yachts allowed vessels to be lifted out of the water and then moved to a working
area on land or even into one of these massive buildings for refit and repairs
So thirty years after the closure of the former Normed yard, the La Ciotat
shipyard is well on the way to a remarkable turnaround and it's playing a
leading role in the Mediterranean market for superyacht refits and services in
the 21st century approximately 100 yachts over 50 meters or about 1/7 the
world's fleet of super yachts come to La Ciotat shipyards every year for refit
and repair work