“The audit carried out at the end of last year showed that the company was worse off than the previous management claimed” – says Piotr Słupski, a member of the management board of the investment fund association: MS Towarzystwo Funduszy Inwestycyjnych which has been the owner of Gryfia since October 2010.  “The profits of the shipyard generated over the previous years were not derived from its core business activity, but resulted from purely accounting operations that were not linked with any actual cash income. The company has run up a debt of a few dozen million zlotys.”

The situation is so bad that the owners believe it necessary to introduce a remedial program. The management board is currently developing a restructuring plan for the company. The plan should be ready at the end of February and it will include the following objectives: soliciting orders from new markets, increasing the scale of the company’s operations, reducing costs and optimising the current employment structure.

The employees of the shipyard are especially alarmed by the last-mentioned point, as they are worried about lay-offs and Gryfia’s future prospects. They even contacted Szczecin town councillors and parliament members, who in turn wrote a letter to the Prime Minister expressing their concern about the situation in the company and in particular, the discontinuation of the former restructuring plan and changes on the company’s management board; they have also petitioned for intervention in that respect.

A new president, Patryk Michalak, who is also the president of Stocznia Gdynia’s management board, has been managing the affairs of Gryfia since the beginning of February. For many years he occupied various executive positions, he also took part in Supervisory Boards of the following companies: Huta Szczecin, Remet in Stalowa Wola and Entrada Consulting Group in Wrocław.

The major part of the company’s revenues is now derived from building a ship for Arranda – a subsidiary of Industrial Development Agency. Gryfia also regularly carries out maintenance and repairs on other ships, but such works are now very limited due to the winter period. The shipyard currently employs about 850 persons.
 

PŁ