Navantia Brand Guidelines: Bazán, IZAR, a 2005 Name & Harland & Wolff

A 2005 name on old arsenals.

Navantia is a Spanish state-owned shipbuilder with its head office in Madrid. English Wikipedia says it is wholly owned by SEPI, the Sociedad Estatal de Participaciones Industriales, the state’s industrial holding group, and that it designs, builds, repairs and modernises military and civilian vessels. Spanish Wikipedia describes it as the main contractor to the Spanish Navy and gives its slogan as “Tecnología para el mar a la medida del cliente” — technology for the sea, made to the customer’s measure.

The company is young; its yards are not. Spanish Wikipedia traces its roots to the medieval shipyards of Seville, the Atarazanas, in the reign of Alfonso X in the 13th century, and to the Real Carenero at San Fernando. In the 18th century, under reforms associated with the Marqués de la Ensenada and Jorge Juan, naval building moved to the arsenals of Ferrol, Cartagena and La Carraca near Cádiz. In 1908, the same source says, those yards became part of the Sociedad Española de Construcción Naval, known as La Naval, alongside civil yards such as Matagorda at Puerto Real and Sestao in Biscay.

At the end of the Spanish Civil War the state took over the military arsenals, and in 1947 it formed the Empresa Nacional Bazán, which at first relied on foreign technology before developing its own ship designs, according to both Wikipedia editions. In 2000 Bazán merged with Astilleros Españoles, the grouping of the state’s civil yards, to form IZAR. In December 2004 SEPI, IZAR’s main shareholder, decided to separate the military branch, and in March 2005 the new company Navantia was created; the civil branch was later transferred to it as well.

Frigates, flat tops and submarines.

Navantia’s work is easiest to describe through its programmes. English Wikipedia lists the F-100 Álvaro de Bazán-class frigates (2002–12) for Spain, the F-310 Fridtjof Nansen class for Norway (2006–11), the Hobart-class destroyers for Australia (2016–19) and the Supply-class replenishment oilers (2017–21). Its large-deck ships include Juan Carlos I of 2010, a design the company offers as the ATHLAS 26000, the Canberra-class landing helicopter docks of 2014 for Australia and the Galicia-class landing platform docks of 1998 and 2000. The carrier Príncipe de Asturias, commissioned in 1988, was the first Spanish ship with gas-turbine propulsion, Spanish Wikipedia says.

Submarines are a second line. In April 2021 Navantia launched the S-81 Isaac Peral, the lead boat of the S-80 Plus class. English Wikipedia calls it the company’s first completely Spanish-designed and Spanish-built submarine; Spanish Wikipedia counts it as the second of Spanish design and construction, after Isaac Peral’s own boat, christened 133 years earlier. Earlier, Navantia worked with the French group DCNS on the Scorpène class for export, English Wikipedia says.

Beyond ships, the company divides its work into naval defence, systems, diversification and services, according to the same source. Its turbine factory installed its first ship propulsion plant in 1912, and it has built diesel engines since 1947, working under licence with makers including MAN, MTU and Caterpillar. Spanish Wikipedia lists a systems line that includes the SCOMBA combat management system, and the company now builds structures for offshore wind. Its production centres are the Bay of Cádiz yards at San Fernando, Puerto Real and Cádiz, the Ferrol and Fene yards on the Ría de Ferrol, and Cartagena, with the head office in Madrid.

Design and documentation.

Shipbuilders present themselves to a small number of very large customers: navies, coast guards, shipowners and energy companies. Their identities therefore lean on a short, sturdy wordmark, often a set of initials or a group name, set in navy, blue or red against white, and repeated on yard gates, crane girders, hard hats and the hulls of ships still on the slipway. Many yards sit inside wider industrial groups, so the mark on the crane is frequently the parent’s symbol rather than the yard’s own.

The photography does most of the work. Launch ceremonies, float-outs and naming days, sea trials with a bow wave, aerial views of a dry dock with a goliath crane spanning it: these are the standard images on yard websites and in annual reports. Scale is the message, and a single picture of a hull in dock is usually given more room than any slogan.

Ships are named by type and class, in the words the yards themselves use: LNG carriers, container ships, tankers and bulk carriers, ferries and research vessels, and, for naval yards, patrol vessels, frigates, corvettes and submarines described by programme or class name. Specification panels with length, beam, deadweight and capacity in containers or cubic metres stand in for product shots, and order books are reported ship by ship.

Most shipbuilder websites follow a similar plan: a history page told as a timeline of yards, mergers and renamings; sections for new builds, repair and conversion, and offshore work; a page on facilities, docks and cranes; and, for listed and state-owned yards, investor pages with annual reports. For a designer, the sector shows how an identity can be built from places, dates and ship classes rather than from consumer advertising.

A Belfast yard joins the group.

In 2024 Navantia moved into British shipbuilding. Harland & Wolff, the Belfast company, entered administration in September 2024 for the second time in five years, and on 19 December 2024 Navantia agreed to buy its four yards, English Wikipedia records. On 27 January 2025 the BBC reported that the takeover was complete. The deal covered the yards at Belfast, Appledore, Methil and Arnish, which employed about 1,000 people, and all employees moved to Navantia UK on their existing terms. The yards were put into administration as part of the deal, which meant Navantia would not carry the old firm’s legacy debts, the BBC reported.

The main contract Navantia took over is Fleet Solid Support, three support ships for the Royal Navy, which the company said would be built at Belfast and Appledore alongside its yards in Spain. Harland & Wolff had won it in 2022 as part of Team Resolute, with Navantia UK and the engineering firm BMT, according to Wikipedia. Both Wikipedia editions now list Navantia UK (Harland & Wolff) among the group’s subsidiaries, with Navantia Australia and Navantia Arabia.

As an identity, Navantia is a corporate coinage rather than a founder’s surname, laid in 2005 over yards that had carried older names, from La Naval to Bazán and IZAR. Its ship designs are sold under family names such as ATHLAS, Avante and ALFA, Wikipedia’s product list shows.

For a design guide, Navantia shows how a state shipbuilder can carry a new name across old arsenals and, since 2025, a Belfast yard. Compare Fincantieri, the Italian shipbuilder, and BAE Systems, the British defence group. For this guide we use a navy, a harbour blue and an ochre with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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