In 1984 the first privately owned pilotage and towage company, UZMAR Shipping Ltd., was founded in Turkey by senior Harbour Pilot Capt. Altay Altug, commencing port services in various private ports and harbours on the Aegean Sea, Turkey.

In 1996 UZMAR Shipping Ltd. started to build tugs and workboats for its own fleet requirements and later for international markets using compact tug designs from Robert Allan Ltd., an internationally recognized naval architecture company from Vancouver, Canada. Through the achievement of building numerous tugs and workboats, in 2007 UZMAR established a modern shipbuilding facility at Kocaeli Free Zone, near Istanbul, Turkey with an advanced shipbuilding system of station based serial production method.

The project management is organized by means of Enterprise Resource Planning - ERP (IFS) system which integrates design, planning, production, procurement, warehousing, project coordination and commercial and financial information. Due to the success of UZMAR's advanced modular building system the shipbuilding facility is referred as 'Workboat and Tug Factory'.

Historically being loyal to its marine traditional values, today UZMAR operates with 300 direct employees, serves up to 7500 ship movements at ports and builds on average 12 workboats and tugs per year.

Leading by Custom-Built and On-Time Projects

Most of our new building orders are from owners with a specific towage service contract where the tugs need to be in the operational area within a certain time. The company earned its reputation for its modern serial production method resulting in exceptional quality and on-time delivery and perhaps most important on- budget completion of new building projects.