Navantia commissions new flat-panel workshop at San Fernando shipyard

Navantia's new flat-panel workshop, located at the San Fernando shipyard, aims to improve the construction times and reduce costs of blocks for ships destined for the Spanish Navy and other customers. (Navantia)

Spanish state-owned shipbuilder Navantia has started manufacturing activities in a newly commissioned flat-panel workshop at its San Fernando shipyard in Cádiz.

The Flat Open Unit Workshop is the first of three new factories being built across Navantia's Spanish sites as part of its digital transformation and automation strategy. The new factories are intended to introduce latest-generation technologies and high levels of automation to speed up construction times, reduce costs, and improve the quality of ships produced for current and future programmes for the Spanish Navy and export customers.

Key features of the new Flat Open Unit Workshop include hybrid laser welding and profile plasma and panel cutting machines that offer significantly improved processing speeds, performance, reliability, and quality, Navantia said in a statement issued on 5 August.

Following the successful completion of acceptance tests, operator training, and certification of hybrid laser welding procedures with the Lloyd's Register classification society, construction of the first flat panels for the blocks of current projects in the new workshop is now under way, the shipbuilder said.

The next step in Navantia's digitalisation and automation strategy will be the commissioning of a new digital block factory being built at its Ferrol shipyard and a new flat-panel line at its Puerto Real shipyard.

Construction of the digital block factory started in December 2023, and under current planning, Navantia said it will move into production during 2026. The new factory is where some of the blocks for the third Bonifaz (F-110)-class frigate for the Spanish Navy will be built in the future.