Cicek family and Celal Cicek's shipbuilding history starts from 1960's under the name of GAYE Ltd. but Naval architect and MSC. marine engineer Celal Cicek established Deniz Industry Co. / Cicek Shipyard in July 1 1977. The shipyard was located in Halic - Balat, İstanbul. The first ship we constructed in this shipyard was a coaster of 3.250dwt named "Coskun Yagci". We also built two sister ships having the same tonnage in this yard in Haliç.
In 1979, company applied for land in Tuzla following the announcement of the Tuzla Private Sector Shipyard Area. We commenced ship construction at this site in 1981.
By the end of 1982, company had started on the construction of product tanker of 3.250dwt named “Doğan Kaman” and of a chemical tanker of 3.250dwt named “Orse”. The design work was undertaken by naval architect and marine engineer Celal Çiçek.
At that time, “Orse” was the first chemical tanker to be built in Turkey.
In 1982, company started construction of a 5.700dwt bulkcarrier, named “Kazim Kolotoglu”, which was the biggest ship company had constructed at that time. Again, she was completely our own design and was delivered in 1984.
Towards the governments decision of subsidising the purchase of second hand vessels from abroad hence 1985, all the Turkish shipyards as well as ours were left without domestic demand and proceeded constructing vessels in smaller sizes and different types and left to perform conversions and repairs.
In those difficult days, our banks did not provide any Letters of Guarantee for shipbuilding due to lack of knowledge of the shipbuilding industry. Therefore we could not deliver any letter of guarantees for foreign shipping companies.
Our shipyard maintained its activities for several years by carrying out ship repair work and by building smaller vessels including tugs- tankers -chemical tankers and bulk carriers. This continued until 2003.
Today, our company has been in the shipbuilding and ship repair industry for over 40 years and it employs 300 people directly plus 600 subcontractors. All are managed by the company’s president. The naval architect and marine engineer Celal Cicek Msc who celebrated his 50th year in engineering this year.
Our company recently completed several important projects for Turkish shipowners. Most of these ships have subsequently been resaled to important European shipowners.