Norwegian shipbuilder, Kleven Verft and its two subsidiaries Kleven Maritime Contracting and Kleven Maritime Technology, have filed for bankruptcy.
Last January, Croatian industry group DIV signed an agreement with Hurtigruten to buy the shipyard, which by then was already in financial trouble.
Reports in the Norwegian press suggested that three creditors recently terminated agreements with the shipyard.
These included a group of Norwegian banks, together with Innovasjon Norge, and Geik who made the decision to pull the plug.
DIV Group’s owner, Tomislav Debeljak, had sent a letter to employees saying that bankruptcy would be considered, if no agreement was reached by 1st July. Both the shipyards and its subsidiaries accounts were frozen after the creditors terminated the agreement.
“The unjustified loan termination and subsequent freezing of accounts have disabled Kleven Verft and its subsidiaries from performing their activities, even though the company’s management invested significant efforts over the past week to return the negotiations with all stakeholders to the starting position,” a DIV Group statement said. “Since no agreement was reached, the only thing left for Kleven’s management to do was to file for bankruptcy in accordance with the laws of the Kingdom of Norway.”
DIV Group also acquired the Croatian shipyard, Brodosplit, in 2013.
Four Hurtigruten rebuilding projects are due to be undertaken this year and next. In addition, in May of this year, Kleven Verft and Brodosplit said that they would work together to build a residential yacht ‘Njord’ for Ocean Residences Development Ltd.
