Vanpraet Chantiers Navals de Nord

VANPRAET Chantiers Navals du Nord.

The company was foiunded in 1727 in Belgium. The original house of the Chantiers Navals du Nord Vanpraet still exists, in the form of a museum, in Belgium, in Baasrood, this glorious shipyard for the Flemings lived exactly from 1706 to 1985. The French subsidiary opened in Villeneuve la Garenne in 1922. It was the grandfather of Walter and Jacques Parienté who arrived with 200 workers and moved shipping from wooden boats to steel boats.

At the beginning of the century, Villeneuve la Garenne was a ‘’small Saint Nazaire” where the furnaces of the riveters glowed. Four to five construction and repair sites employed 500 people and supported 5,000 with engine manufacturers, craftsmen and suppliers.

“Les Cales du Nord” as the Vanpraet shipyards were called developed very quickly thanks to its large slipway allowing it, in the 1970s, both to build boats for river tourism and the trade in goods, and to repair ships. boats for individuals and sailors

Today the activity is identical: fairing, repair, transformation of accommodation boats, commercial boats and passenger boats, bringing them up to standard, mechanics and still construction, such as the last office barge built in 2016. , the West River, moored at Boulogne Billancourt

Over the  years the shipyard has built 4 dredgers:

- a suction dredger for Brazil, 21 x 5.25m

- a steam bucket ladder dredger for Lavelaine de Maubeuge, 23 x 5m

- “Happetout”, a sea-going clamshell dredger, 38.50 x 7.60,m 100 HP, for the French Navy at Cherbourg

- suction dredge for Bangui (mining?) in 1969