Small trading ships similar to
Jacobstads Wapen were built in Finnish coastal towns in the 18th century. Small-scale shipyards continued to exist well into the 20th century. The first large scale
shipyard was the
galley dry dock at
Sveaborg built in the mid-18th century, which serviced the ships that won one of the
largest sea battles in Finnish history.
The first industrial scale shipyard in Turku was established in 1732. After the
Crimean War,
William Crichton acquired a workshop and built a new shipyard, which later absorbed smaller shipyards and developed into
Crichton-Vulcan and merged with
Wärtsilä between 1936 and 1938. Germany outsourced a notable amount of
submarine construction to Finland after
World War I. This section of industry was later outlawed by the
Paris Peace Treaty, but it became an important foundation for the Finnish maritime industry.
Soviet trade A major boost to Finnish
shipbuilding was the
war reparations paid to the
Soviet Union after
World War II. They forced a rapid
industrialization of Finland and the creation of a large
metal industry in addition to the traditional
papermaking and
forest industries. By 1953, the shipbuilding industry had six times the capacity it did in 1944.
Bilateral trade with the Soviet Union forced Finnish shipyards to build ships with a high percentage of total value of Finnish origin. All major components of the finished products needed to be produced domestically. The high percentage of domestic components continues even after the
dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of the lucrative
trade deals. While ships built in other European shipyards are a collection of components from around
Europe and around the world, ships built in Finland can have up to 90% of their total value in Finnish components and labor (
kotimaisuusaste). ==Major companies==