The Dutch shipbuilding decline and science: Why MARIN survived.

Maritime Research Institute Netherlands (MARIN) is an internationally renowned maritime institute that finds itself at the cutting edge of maritime expertise. From the 1960s to the 1980s Shipbuilding would shift away from Europe to countries in Asia with lower wages. In the Netherlands this led to a shrinkage in the shipbuilding sector of about 60%. At the same time the 1970s and 1980s would be a bad time for shipbuilding in general as the 1973 oil crisis would be followed by the 1980s oil glut. This raises the question of why MARIN survived all this turmoil? This question was answered by gathering data from MARIN's annual reports and other sources like newspapers to establish three key facts: Firstly in how much trouble MARIN really was, secondly how reliant MARIN was on income from Dutch sources and lastly what core competence the institute built up to face the new market. The coming hardships where not apparent to MARIN's executives in 1968 when they decided to build a large and expensive new testing facility in Ede called the vacuum tank. The vacuum tank, while certainly pushing MARIN's technical and scientific pedigree of Ship powering forwards, did provide the revenue was hoped for. Unable to generate the profits needed to pay back its loans MARIN started making heavy losses. These losses where however not due to the Dutch shipbuilding collapse, but instead due to a general malaise in the shipbuilding sector combined with strong foreign competition. MARIN's core competence in Ship powering and Ocean engineering allowed it to tap into relatively healthy segments of the Dutch shipbuilding market when it needed to. After a looming bankruptcy the Dutch government provided emergency relief and set up the CRONSP to provide a long term solution. This would result in MARIN merging with the NMI and receiving an annual subsidy. MARIN's situation was still not sustainable in the long term, but this annual subsidy combined with government loans ensured MARIN's survival for now. The subsidies MARIN would have needed to reach sustainability were significantly less than some of its fellow GTI's were receiving. This means that while MARIN relied on government funding for survival, this amount was less than expected for a public institute of its size.