''Estaleiros Navais de Viana do Castelo'' (ENVC) is a medium-sized

shipyard A shipyard, also called a dockyard or boatyard, is a place where ships are built and repaired. These can be yachts, military vessels, cruise liners or other cargo or passenger ships. Dockyards are sometimes more associated with maintenance a ...

in business since 1944, located in the town of

Viana do Castelo Viana do Castelo () is a municipality and seat of the district of Viana do Castelo in the Norte Region of Portugal. The population in 2011 was 88,725, in an area of 319.02 km². The urbanized area of the municipality, comprising the city, ...

, on the Atlantic Coast in the very north of

Portugal Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic ( pt, República Portuguesa, links=yes ), is a country whose mainland is located on the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of ...

. Occupying an area of 400,000 square metres and employing 625 people, it is a major Portuguese shipbuilder. In 2013 its assets and operations are sub-licensed to

Martifer Martifer SGPS, S.A. is a family group based in Oliveira de Frades, Portugal, with over 3,000 employees, focusing its activity on the metal construction and renewable energy areas. The company launched its first operations in 1990 in the metal s ...

(

West Sea Shipyard , type = Private limited company , traded_as = , industry = Shipbuilding , founded = , founder = , defunct = , hq_location_city = Viana do Castelo, Viana do Castelo, Alto Minho, Northern Portugal , hq_location_country = Portugal , are ...

History

The shipyards were funded in June 1944 as a private

limited liability company A limited liability company (LLC for short) is the US-specific form of a private limited company. It is a business structure that can combine the pass-through taxation of a partnership or sole proprietorship with the limited liability of a ...

with a capital of 750,000$00 ''escudos'' by a group of technicians and workers from the shipyards of the port of Lisbon. Two of the first investors were Vasco D'Orey and João Alves Cerqueira, from the

cod Cod is the common name for the demersal fish genus '' Gadus'', belonging to the family Gadidae. Cod is also used as part of the common name for a number of other fish species, and one species that belongs to genus ''Gadus'' is commonly not call ...

fishing industry. Its creation was part of a Portuguese government program to modernize the national fishing fleet. In 1948 the company delivered its first three ships, all

fishing trawler A fishing trawler is a commercial fishing vessel designed to operate Trawling, fishing trawls. Trawling is a method of fishing that involves actively dragging or pulling a trawl through the water behind one or more trawlers. Trawls are fishing ...

s for cod fishing: ''Senhor dos Mareantes'' and ''Senhora das Candeias'' were delivered to the company ''Empresa de Pesca de Viana'', and ''São Gonçalinho'' to the company ''Empresa de Pesca de Aveiro''. In May 1949, the ENVC were constituted as an anonymous society with a PTE 37,000,000$00 capital. in 1950 the company H. Parry & Son, Lda. became the main shareholder and in 1971 the CUF group took over as the major shareholder. In 1975, following the

Carnation Revolution The Carnation Revolution ( pt, Revolução dos Cravos), also known as the 25 April ( pt, 25 de Abril, links=no), was a military coup by left-leaning military officers that overthrew the authoritarian Estado Novo regime on 25 April 1974 in Lisbo ...

the previous year, the shipyards were

nationalized Nationalization (nationalisation in British English) is the process of transforming privately-owned assets into public assets by bringing them under the public ownership of a national government or state. Nationalization usually refers to pri ...

and became a

state-owned company A state-owned enterprise (SOE) is a Government, government entity which is established or nationalised by the ''national government'' or ''provincial government'' by an executive order or an act of legislation in order to earn Profit (econom ...

with a capital of PTE 330,000,000$00. In 1987 its capital was changed to 3 million ''contos''. In 1991 the company was made an anonymous society with the Portuguese government remaining the major shareholder. Since the early years Viana shipyard has developed its own design and had the capacity to design, build, convert and repair different sophisticated and specialized ships. Up to the present, the yard has delivered more than 200 vessels including barges, tugboats, ferry boats, fishing vessels, general cargo and bulk carriers, container ships, oil and chemical tankers, LPG's, cement carriers and war vessels.

References

External links

ENVC
official website
ENVC Subconcessão
EMPORDEF campaign website regarding the sub-licensing {{Coord missing, Portugal Shipyards of Portugal

History

See also

References

External links