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BERLIN (AP) — Germany’s government will help rescue a major German shipyard that has solid orders for new cruise ships but has run into financial difficulty, Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Thursday.
Meyer Werft employs more than 3,000 people in Papenburg on the Ems river in northwestern Germany, near the Dutch border. The company has build 58 cruise ships so far, according to its website.
Its customers include Disney Cruise Line, with which it announced an agreement earlier this month to build another four ships. Even before that, the company said it had full order books through to 2028.
However, it has run into financial trouble because it has had to pay much of the cost of building cruise ships up front. Scholz cited the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic as one factor in its troubles and said the company is “systemically relevant” to shipbuilding in Germany, Europe’s biggest economy.
