DSEI — Germany’s Rheinmetall is on the brink of acquiring local shipbuilder Naval Vessels Luerssen (NVL) as it looks to break into the naval domain and take advantage of lucrative domestic and European market opportunities.
The NVL takeover is “happen[ing] very soon, over the next days,” Rheinmetall CEO Armin Papperger told Breaking Defense at the DSEI trade show in London Wednesday. “On the naval side, there is a huge European market and there is also a huge German market,” he said, citing the need for Berlin to replace 30-year-old frigates and corvettes, near term.
Laying out the business case for buying NVL, he said the shipbuilder has a “good order book” that Rheinmetall will capitalize on by focusing on ship-based integration of an array of “missile technologies, launching technologies, simulation [and] electronic warfare” capabilities.
NVL operates shipyards in Hamburg, Wilhelmshaven and Wolgast, and reportedly wants to divest from defense activities to prioritize mega yacht manufacturing.
With the takeover looming, NVL is in the process of delivering on a German Navy order for three new Type 424 intelligence ships to replace OSTE-class vessels. Earlier this month a steel cutting ceremony — to mark entry into production of the second Type 424 — took place at the Peene-Werft shipyard in Wolgast, according to a NVL company statement [PDF].
Recent industrial collaboration from the firm also includes a joint venture with the UK-based Kraken Technology Group to increase autonomous surface vessel manufacturing capacity at NVL’s Blohm+Voss yard in Hamburg.
Rheinmetall, Germany’s largest weapons maker that’s more traditionally driven by the production of armored vehicles, tanks and ammunition, has made significant inroads in relation to diversifying its product portfolio, signaling expansion into the space domain last year. The integration and use of space-based reconnaissance data, alongside investment in synthetic aperture radar specialists ICEYE, are key to the company’s ambitious approach.
“Space is part of our technology,” Papperger said. “Then we step now into the naval side and you see there are a lot of examples where we build up our ecosystem.”
As Breaking Defense reported earlier this week, Rheinmetall and Lockheed Martin unveiled a next-generation “missile tank destroyer” at DSEI, showcasing a technology demonstrator combining a 6×6 Fuchs armored vehicle and Hellfire Longbow and Joint Air to Ground Munition missiles.