Damen Shipyards Group

Anyone familiar with buying a yacht will know Damen is a top-tier player in the luxury yacht building market, though better known for its Amels brand, which has launched more than a hundred superyachts including some of the finest and most spectacular in the world. 

Whilst they have a huge range of new and used yachts for sale, that is just one piece of the big picture. Damen also builds and services tugs, pontoons, launches and workboats, warships and other naval vessels, offshore support vessels for oil, gas and renewable energy installations, passenger ferries, river and sea-going cruise ships, dredgers and dredging equipment, trawlers and other fishing vessels, container ships, coasters, freighters, tankers, ro-ro transporters, bulk carriers, barges and more. 

It isn’t just yachts that for sale as, In addition to shipbuilding, it also designs and builds structures and equipment for ports and shipyards such as slipways, travel lifts, ship lifts, linkspans, shipbuilding sheds and breakwaters. It all adds up to a €2bn-a-year  ($2.5bn) conglomerate of 54 companies. Sixteen of its 36 shipyards are in The Netherlands and the other 20 are scattered all over the world. 23 of the Damen shipyards build new vessels and 18 of them carry out refit, repair and conversion work. 

Damen Group employs 12,000 people worldwide including 3,500 in The Netherlands. Among its staff are more than a thousand qualified engineers. It builds about 170 new ships (including yachts) per year and repairs around 1,500. Despite its huge scale, Damen remains a family-owned business run by the Damen family. The patriarch and company chairman Kommer Damen, who built the business from a small company into a multinational empire, is reckoned to be worth several billion euros in his own right.