140 years of service
This year we celebrate 140 years of quality and service in Germany.
Lloyd’s Register has been working to serve the needs of clients in Germany for almost 140 years; it has surveyed beautiful barques and luxurious yachts; inspected steel works, oil refineries and pressure equipment; and supplied independent assurance services across complete supply chains in the energy and transport sectors.
Great advances were made at German shipbuilding yards in the 1870s including at Blohm + Voss, one of whose founders, Ernst Voss, was formerly a Lloyd’s Register surveyor. The first Lloyd’s Register office in Germany was opened at Hamburg in 1871 by Carl Ferdinand Steinhaus. The next was established at Bremerhaven five years later when Wilhelm Paulsen was appointed to cover the River Weser. J Meyer was appointed to undertake steel testing duties in Düsseldorf from 1889 and the first exclusive surveyor, George Dykes, was appointed in 1893 to cover the expanding port of Hamburg, as it continued to increase in global importance.
Lloyd’s Register’s services to German owners and yards became an integral part of the growing industry. In 1912 Dykes was appointed as Principal Surveyor for the ports on the Baltic and North Sea, and the Rules were translated into German. Building on its knowledge of refrigeration, the organisation inspected refrigerated railway wagons in Germany from 1928, and went on to produce Rules for Refrigerated Railway Cars in 1930.
Two world wars severely disrupted activities in Germany. During the second, surveyors continued their work, despite having lost contact with the London office. The Düsseldorf and Hamburg offices were destroyed by bombing, but employees rescued important records. After the war, the organisation advised on wreck removal from harbours and assessed ships bound for the UK. The following reconstruction period saw a rapid increase in demand for Lloyd’s Register’s services and by 1950 there were 25 surveyors based at seven offices. Marine technical standards were revived and inspections carried out at steelworks. By the mid-1950s, German yards were producing enough tonnage to rival their British counterparts.
Lloyd’s Register inaugurated its German Committee in 1964, facilitating greater understanding of local needs and conditions. In the 1960s, the organisation advised on the atomic energy plant at Gundremmingen. The first successful oil-bulk-ore (OBO) carrier, the 71,000 tons gross Naess Norseman, was built to Lloyd’s Register class in Germany in 1965. Also built in the country in 1957 was Adma Enterprise, the first mobile, self-elevating drilling barge to be classed, signalling the start of Lloyd’s Register’s growing involvement in offshore work.
In the 1970s a new plan approval office was opened in Hamburg and surveyors in Germany continued their involvement in offshore projects around the world. Quality assurance work has also grown.
Today, the Lloyd’s Register Group supports clients across the breadth of industry and technology in Germany where it continues to build closer relationships for a safer world.