Can the West rediscover its shipbuilding capacity?
At the opening day of the Arctic Circle Business Forum in Reykjavík, James Davies, CEO of Davie Shipbuilding, made the case that the West must relearn how to build its own ships. Especially icebreakers, which have come to define presence and power in the Arctic.
Speaking at the ballroom at The Reykjavík EDITION hotel, Davies argued that rebuilding shipbuilding capability is about more than industrial renewal—it’s about sovereignty itself. “If you cannot build your own ships, you cannot replace the tonnage that you have,” he said. “It’s a question of attrition.”
As melting sea ice opens the Arctic to new shipping lanes, resource access and strategic competition, Davies warned that Western nations risk losing their foothold without the ability to design and produce heavy ice-class vessels.
“If we don’t have icebreakers, we can’t be present there,” he said. “And there are others that would like to effectively own the Arctic by virtue of having the right assets to be present. This is a sovereignty question.”
Finland is the one huge exception when it comes to building ice breakers. Finnish designers have led the field for decades and Finnish yards currently turn out 60% of the world’s icebreakers. But even with Finland’s dominance in this niche, Western fleets remain thin for today’s Arctic ambitions.
A trilateral effort to rebuild
Under Davies’s leadership, Davie Shipbuilding has become a central player in the effort to restore Western maritime capability. The Québec-based company is a key participant in the ICE Pact, a trilateral initiative between Finland, Canada and the United States that pools expertise and coordinates production of advanced icebreakers.
That partnership took a major step forward last week when President Donald Trump and the President of Finland signed a memorandum of understanding to produce 11 new U.S. icebreakers—four to be built in Finland and the remainder in North America under the guidance of Finnish experts. Davies implied that the deal was the most significant level of ship building cooperation since the Second World War, saying it marks a new era in industrial strategy for Western allies.
“It’s about ensuring that we have the capability to mobilize and do what we haven’t done since the Second World War without actually having a war,” he said.
Rebuilding the industrial muscle
Davies described the decline of Western shipbuilding as a cautionary tale that has hurt not just industrial capacity, but strategic sovereignty.
“Shipbuilding used to account for more than 16 percent of GDP in the UK,” he said. “A few years later, it was half that. Today, it’s gone. The same thing happened in Sweden. Japan peaked. Now, over 70 percent of tonnage is built in China.”
For him, the solution lies in long-term investment and coordinated industrial policy. Davie Shipbuilding plans to invest roughly US$1 billion in infrastructure and workforce development to expand its Arctic shipbuilding capacity. The aim is not only to modernize shipyards, but to restore the “muscle memory” of complex vessel construction that the West once took for granted.
He argued that the Eest had leaned too hard on the “invisible hand”, which had allowed market forces to replace national strategy.
Icebreakers as instruments of presence
In recent years, icebreakers have become more than just ships. Davies sees icebreakers as more than sturdy ships made of steel and steering wheels, they are both strategic tools and emblems of national resilience.
“Russia has more than 40 icebreakers,” he said. “Russia is capable in the Arctic in ways that, frankly, the West is not. If you don’t have the tools, you don’t get to play. It is that simple.”
That blunt message resonated in Reykjavík, where policymakers and business leaders gathered to discuss the economic and geopolitical implications of a newly accessible Arctic. Geopolitics in the region, seem to be only heating up and as Davies put it, the race to rebuild industrial capacity is as much about deterrence and stability as it is about economics.
