Spanish shipbuilder Navantia announced on 5 August 2025 that it has begun production within the new Open Flat Units Workshop (TUAP) at its San Fernando shipyard. The new facility, which is the most significant investment in recent years at the San Fernando shipyard, is designed to both reduce construction times and lower the costs of blocks for ships destined for the Spanish Navy and other customers.
The production of flat panels for the blocks of current projects at the TUAP began after the successful completion of acceptance tests, operator training and certification of hybrid laser welding procedures with the Lloyd’s Register classification society.
The first programme to benefit from the new workshop will be the Avante 2200 corvette programme, under which the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Defence contracted Navantia for an additional three corvettes on 11 December 2024 beyond the five already in service with the Royal Saudi Naval Forces.
The TUAP is intended to bring a technological leap in shipbuilding through the introduction of hybrid laser welding that is both faster than previous processes and produces far fewer deformations and very controlled weld necks. Additionally, both the profile plasma cutting machine and the panel cutting machine “have a high technological level, with high precision, performance and reliability, achieving cutting speeds and qualities superior to those maintained until now”, Navantia noted.
The commissioning of the new workshop required the training of personnel as diverse as engineers from different functional areas, cutting and hybrid laser welding machine operators, as well as maintenance personnel.
The next step in Navantia’s digitalisation and automation strategy will be the Digital Block Factory being built at its Ferrol shipyard and the Flat Panel Line at its Puerto Real shipyard.
Since 2019 Navantia has invested more than EUR 540 million in the modernisation and transformation of its production processes.
