In April this year, the Romanian shipyard Damen Shipyards Mangalia went into liquidation. Now the German defence contractor Rheinmetall is looking to take over the shipyard on the Black Sea.
Damen Shipyards Mangalia, which had run into financial difficulties, is to be taken over by Rheinmetall. On 9 October 2026, the insolvency administrator CITR, according to its own statement, awarded the contract to Rheinmetall Real Estate România SRL for a net sum of €138.03 million.
Previously, four auctions at an estimated value of €184 million had failed to attract any bidders. Rheinmetall, which had not been involved until then, entered the bidding process after the price was reduced to 75 per cent. The liquidation value is estimated at €84 million, although the shipyard’s core site was not included in the sale. It is operated under concession by the state-owned company 2MMS.
Damen had held a 49 per cent stake in the shipyard since 2018, with Bucharest holding 51 per cent. In 2023, Damen terminated the partnership. In June 2024, Damen Holding filed for insolvency, and the company went into liquidation in April 2026. The Dutch family-owned company lodged an appeal against the accelerated sale procedure. The appeal has no suspensive effect; the Constanța Court of Appeal is due to hear the case on 4 November. Damen has not yet responded to an enquiry.
No official statement from Rheinmetall regarding the award of the contract had been received by the time of going to press; the Rheinmetall Naval Systems division declined to comment when asked. In May, the group had announced that it was examining Mangalia, in conjunction with the shipping company MSC, as a location for military and civilian shipbuilding. It remains unclear what role MSC now plays.
Shipyard and SAFE contract are linked
The purchase is closely linked to the European SAFE defence programme. On 29 May 2026, the Romanian Ministry of Defence signed a contract worth €920 million with Rheinmetall’s Naval Systems division. It covers two armed offshore patrol vessels and two diving support vessels, which are to be built in Mangalia and delivered by 2030.
Bucharest has made the contracts with Rheinmetall conditional on investment in the domestic defence industry, including the revitalisation of the shipyard. Minister for Economic Affairs Irineu Darău announced that staff would now be recruited and work on the four vessels would begin.
Damen in a tight spot
As early as September 2025, Damen, according to its own statements, had offered four comparable vessels for €457 million. They were to be built at the company’s own shipyard in Galati. The contract was never awarded. According to a press release from the Romanian Ministry of Defence dated 12 May 2026, eight elements were missing from Damen’s 2025 bid: fire control system, NBC detection, hull-mounted sonar (‘sonar de chilă’), command and weapon deployment system, CIWS, decoys and anti-torpedo defences, RAM, torpedo launchers. However, according to a statement by a Damen representative, these components were not part of the contract.
Relations between Damen and Bucharest were already strained. In 2016, the Cioloș government had intended to award a contract for four corvettes directly to Damen Galați, but this failed due to the newly elected parliament’s refusal to give its consent. Naval Group won a subsequent tender in 2019 with a bid of €1.2 billion, narrowly beating Damen, which had entered the competition with its Mangalia and Galați shipyards. Damen unsuccessfully took legal action. As no contract had been concluded by August 2023, the Ministry terminated the procedure.
Competitors on the Black Sea
Following the German Federal Ministry of Defence’s decision to discontinue the F126 frigate project, for which Damen had been awarded the contract in 2020 as the main contractor, in partnership with the naval division of the Bremen-based Lürssen Group – now the Rheinmetall Naval Systems division – the former partners have become direct competitors following Rheinmetall’s acquisition of Mangalia.
The situation is particularly tricky for Damen, as the first delivery of the Belgian-Dutch ASW frigates – whose hulls are to be built in Galați – has been postponed from 2030 to 2033. Belgium is examining alternatives and intends to make a decision by the end of the year. Following the cancellation of the German F126 frigate programme, Damen is demanding €4.7 billion from the Federal Republic of Germany.
