ABSTRACT
The author Wolfgang Kiesel commented on the closure in 1997 of Bremer Vulkan AG, 1 placing its fall within the overall context of the decline of the European shipbuilding industry. 2 More than half of Bremer Vulkan’s 23,000 workers would lose their jobs in the near future. Beforehand, the company had attempted to compete against withering international competition but without government aid it was not strong enough to survive any longer. In general, particularly in the large tanker and bulk carrier markets, the West European shipbuilding industry had been overtaken by South-east Asian competitors for quite some time as the virtual collapse of merchant shipbuilding in the United Kingdom and Sweden demonstrated. 3
