Nakashima and Becker strengthen their joint market position

12^th April 2021: The Japanese company Nakashima Propeller Co. Ltd. takes a majority stake in the German shipbuilding supplier Becker Marine Systems GmbH. This means that two of the world‘s market and technology leaders of the maritime industry will be working even more closely together in the future. Together they can make good use of the product portfolios that complement each other well in the aft ship area. Nakashima Propeller as the world market leader for propellers and Becker Marine Systems as a leading manufacturer of high-efficient rudders and maritime energy-saving devices can thus not only deliver their own technical solutions for medium-sized and large ship types but can also offer more efficient combined systems for the aft section of vessels.

“We have gotten to know Nakashima Propeller as a much respected and reliable partner through decades of cooperation,” said Dirk Lehmann and Henning Kuhlmann, the two managing directors at Becker Marine Systems, “and because we are expert suppliers in the area in front of and behind the propeller with well-known products such as the Becker Mewis Duct® and the Becker Rudder family, the cooperation with the globally leading propeller manufacturer is, of course, a perfect fit.“

Both family companies will aim to be able to offer a very well-coordinated set of innovative technologies in both the newbuilding and retrofit sectors. Customers can now put together attractive overall packages from products that have been successfully tested worldwide. This includes Nakashima’s propellers and bow thruster systems and Becker‘s manoeuvring systems, energy-saving devices and battery solutions. Both companies also have state-of-the-art Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) departments, which will be used even more efficiently together.

„Becker and Nakashima have started the cooperation since 1978. This time, we are pleased to enhance the strategic partnership with Becker Marine Systems through this agreement. I strongly believe that the relationship and trust which both families and management teams built over 40 years enables us to reach this agreement successfully. We will make a significant contribution to total optimisation for propulsive performance as well as manoeuvring performance to our customers during the entire lifecycle of ships.“ said Nakashima‘s President Takayoshi Nakashima as well as Lehmann and Kuhlmann, who will continue to hold the position of managing directors.

As Nakashima Propeller and Becker Marine Systems benefit even more from the new partner‘s additional product portfolio in the future, the merger of the two companies will be advantageous for shipowners and shipyards concerning the use of an optimised maritime technology package and a global service network that is active in all time zones.