Wärtsilä Marine was a Finnish shipbuilding company.
The company was created in 1987 in order to improve shipbuilding productivity by combining the Wärtsilä and Valmet yards under the same organisation. The yards were located in Helsinki and Turku. The company fell in a scandalous bankruptcy in 1989.
The operation was continued after under name Masa-Yards.
Background
During the 1970s and 1980s the European shipbuilding suffered of a too high capacity and unhealthy competition. The Asian shipbuilders had grown fast and taken over a large part of the market. Combination of increasing salary costs and price dumping lead to an untenable situation for many European shipbuilders. Swedish shipbuilders had faced difficulties already in the 1970s and the yards had been kept alive through massive subsidies.[1]
Due to Soviet exports, the Finnish shipbuilders were working in a fairly good level until the 1980s. The five-year-plan of 1981–1985 guaranteed the vital basic load for the Finnish yards, but the plan of 1986–1990 meant the end of the golden era for the Soviet export. The Soviets negotiated very low prices for the few ships included in the plan, and the ordered quantity remained even much lower.