Tandanor, formally Talleres Navales Darsena Norte S.A.C.I. y N., is a ship repair, conversion and construction yard in the port of Buenos Aires. It forms part of CINAR, the Argentine naval industrial complex created by the Ministry of Defence in 2010 to bring Tandanor together with the Almirante Segundo Storni yard, the former Domecq Garcia submarine factory. CINAR is 90 per cent owned by the federal government and 10 per cent by its workers.
The yard's origins run to 1879, when the Talleres Navales de Marina were put into operation. The first recorded refit was the Swedish Antarctic expedition ship Antarctic in 1901, and by the end of 1910 more than a hundred vessels a year were being repaired. It was renamed Arsenal Naval Buenos Aires in February 1922, introduced electric welding in 1927 and took its present name in 1971. Expansion began in January 1978 under a contract with the Miami engineering firm behind the Syncrolift ship lift. The shareholding was put up for sale by decree in 1990, and the company was returned to state ownership by decree in 2007.
Docking is by ship lift and slipway rather than by dock. The Syncrolift lifts 15,000 tonnes and transfers 11,700 tonnes, feeding six working positions. Covered sheds run to 40,000 square metres on a site of 31 hectares. Machine tools include CNC plasma and oxy-fuel cutting, a 2,200-tonne hydraulic press, an 800-tonne press and guillotine, a CNC lathe taking 2,000 millimetres in the chuck over 12 metres of working length, and three- and four-roll plate benders. Quality management is certified to ISO 9001 by Bureau Veritas, welding follows AWS, ASME, DIN and AFNOR standards, and non-destructive testing staff are certified to Argentine, RINA, GL, ABS, Lloyd's Register and Bureau Veritas requirements.
The largest single project was the reconstruction of the Argentine Navy icebreaker A.R.A. Almirante Irizar, gutted by fire in April 2007. The contract was signed in September 2009, 870 tonnes of destroyed steel were cut out from November 2009, and the ship was rebuilt to a DNV class scope with new main and auxiliary generating sets, two ABB propulsion motors of 6,500 kW, distribution changed from 660 V direct current to 3,300 V alternating current and 203 berths in 83 cabins; more than 30,000 metres of piping were completed by July 2014 and the ship returned to service in 2017. Reported cost was 153 million US dollars, 64 per cent of it spent on Argentine equipment and labour. Recent work includes the squid jiggers Xin Shi Ji 28 and 29 in August 2025 and the ferry Ciudad de Buenos Aires on slipway 1 in July 2025. A construction division for tugs, barges and similar craft was set up at the end of 2005 at the sister yard Almirante Storni, whose deliveries include the container barges Care, Conay I and Conay II, four box and rake barges for the province of Chaco and a Damen Stan Tug 2608 built for Damen Shipyards and classed by Lloyd's Register.
