MTG Dolphin repairs and builds ships at Ezerovo, on the northern shore of Lake Varna in Bulgaria, with unrestricted access to the Black Sea and a position between the Varna East and Varna West ports. The company was established on 12 January 1991 and began by maintaining Bulgarian and Greek owned vessels. The first stage of its infrastructure, covering workshops, cranes, equipment and energy supply, was completed between 1995 and 1998, and the second stage, for both shipbuilding and repair, in 2005. More than 550 people work there today; average employment was 250 in the first years, 450 by 1999 and 670 by 2005.
Two floating docks are in use. Dock No. 1, in operation since February 1999, lifts 18,000 tonnes. Dock No. 2, used for building as well as repair, lifts 8,500 tonnes. The outfitting and repair quays carry drafts of 6 to 10 metres. Lifting equipment runs to ten shore cranes of 25, 20, 8 and 5 tonnes and more than thirty bridge cranes of 140, 100, 80, 32, 12.5, 8 and 5 tonnes. There are covered hull, piping, mechanical, electrical and machining shops, four covered warehouses and three open ones for plate, profile and pipe.
The plant has been extended steadily. Between 2015 and 2020 a fully covered hull workshop with heavy crane equipment was added, designed for bulk sections and their assembly into blocks and for building complete vessels of up to 80 metres, along with new pipe and assembly workshops. Since 2020 a covered steel processing workshop has been built, with CNC plate and profile cutting and an automated panel line for joining plates and welding stiffeners in flat sections, and the pipe workshop has gained CNC cutting, bending and cold forming.
Shipbuilding began after 2006 and has covered bunker supply vessels, product carriers and chemical tankers, corvettes, fast patrol boats, offshore patrol vessels and fast attack craft, trailing suction hopper, grab hopper and cutter suction dredgers, tugboats, hydrographic research vessels, sailing vessels and inland passenger ferries, including multipurpose patrol vessels for the Bulgarian Navy. The yard's own designs include the D-ASD 27-40 azimuth stern drive tug and a hydrographic research vessel. Twenty-seven ships have been built in the last twenty years and about 1,500 have been docked since 1991; docking is for vessels of up to 18,000 tonnes displacement. Work is done to Bureau Veritas and Lloyd's Register rules and to IMO and flag state requirements, and the company obtained an ISO 9001:2000 certificate from Lloyd's Register Quality Assurance in 1999, later adding its own non-destructive testing laboratory and training centre.
