Perno shipyard

Perno shipyard is a shipyard in Turku, south west Finland that specialises in building cruise ships, passenger ferries, special vessels and offshore projects. The yard area is 144 hectares. The yard is operated by Meyer Turku Oy. The dry dock is 365 metres long, 80 metres wide and 10 metres deep, and equipped with a bridge crane with a capacity of 600 tonnes.

Wärtsilä's shipbuilding grew heavily in the 1960s and over time the old yard area on both banks of the Aura river that runs through Turku became too small. When Tankmar Horn was appointed the new general manager of Wärtsilä in 1971, the idea of a modern "ship factory" started to evolve, inspired by the Swedish Götaverken Arendal yard.

The area selected for the new yard was in Perno, then part of Raisio, some ten kilometres from the centre of Turku. The area was joined to Turku, and on 8 April 1974 the city council approved a plan of selling 144 hectares of land and 34 hectares water area to Wärtsilä for a new shipyard. The work was launched in a ceremony held on 16 May 1974, when president Urho Kekkonen detonated the first explosive charge of the site work. The number of construction workers rose to over 1 000 people.

The first part of construction was the dry dock, which was then specified to length of 250 metres and width of 80 metres, and measured for two 100 000 dry weight vessels, a bridge crane of 600-tonne capacity, 70 metres operative height and 150 metres track, two 50-tonne level luffing cranes, a warm hall of 42 000 square metres for steelworks, paint shop, service building and an office building with dressing rooms. At this stage the headcount was 1 200; the workers were from the old yard, where the capacity was reduced respectively. Designing, administration, special ship building up to 40 000 tonnes, diesel engine production and ship repairs were decided to be kept at the old yard for then.

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