MSC Explores Buying Germany's Controlling Stake in Shipbuilder Meyer Werft

MSC Group is exploring the purchase of the controlling stake in German shipbuilder Meyer Werft, with discussions running with Germany's federal government and the state of Lower Saxony. The two together took 80.73 percent of the yard in 2024 as part of a financial rescue. The discussions are preliminary, could end without an agreement, and leave room for other bidders to emerge. A transaction would cover the yard facilities at Papenburg and at Rostock on the Baltic.

Meyer Werft got into difficulty in part because of the pandemic. The yard held on to its existing cruise ship orders, but deliveries slipped and the pace of new work slowed, and the company was pre-financing construction rather than taking progress payments, so it received nothing until each ship was handed over. Inflation and the cost increases that followed the 2022 invasion of Ukraine deepened the problem, because contracts for the ships then building at Papenburg had been signed before the pandemic and carried no adjustment for energy and raw material prices.

The 2024 rescue put EUR 400m of capital into the company alongside loan guarantees of EUR 2.6bn, structured to carry operations until at least 2028 and the delivery of the existing cruise ship orders. The Meyer family retains 20 percent and a first right of refusal to repurchase the government stakes, but gave up its management roles during the reorganisation. The governments are looking to at least recoup the EUR 400m, and would be expected to seek guarantees on employment and operations, since both yards are large regional employers. The collapse of MV Werften, the three yards Genting Hong Kong acquired and then took into insolvency, sits close behind that caution.

MSC was already set to become one of the yard's largest customers. In December 2025 it signed a letter of intent for four cruise ships with an option for two more, a project of roughly 180,000 gross tons each with accommodation for 5,400 passengers, among the largest hulls that can leave Papenburg. Reports at the time valued the order at approximately EUR 11bn, and the German federal government subsequently approved state loan guarantees worth EUR 11.5bn for the construction programme. Meyer said in June that contract negotiations and the design work were complex but had reached an advanced stage.

The orderbook underneath the transaction is full. Two 180,000 gross ton ships, Carnival Festivale and Carnival Tropicale, are under construction for Carnival Cruise Line, alongside the 140,000 gross ton Disney Believe, a similar ship for Oriental Land, and three smaller Disney vessels, with work booked to 2030. Rostock is building river cruise ships for Viking. Disney recently noted that the yard had completed the grand block for Disney Believe and floated it out of the building hall because the hall was needed for other projects.

Financially the recovery is partial. Meyer Werft reported higher 2025 revenue on the delivery of Asuka III and Disney Destiny, the completion of Disney Adventure in Wismar, two river cruise ships, a German research vessel and offshore energy converter platforms, but still posted losses of approximately EUR 384m on old contracts and the former financing practice. Management expects to approach breakeven in 2026, with no cruise ship delivery scheduled this year, and says the restructuring is proceeding to plan. Its own company statements set out that position.

The yard traces its origins back 230 years and built its cruise business from the 1980s, and could return to commercial shipbuilding, constrained mainly by the size of the Papenburg lock and the dimensions that can safely transit the Ems. For MSC this would not be a first attempt at owning a yard: in 2024 and 2025 the group was linked to negotiations with the Romanian government over the Mangalia shipyard, possibly alongside Rheinmetall, for cruise ship construction and repair and other commercial work.

This story is part of the Maritime Briefing of 22 September 2026.