The story
Mitsui E&S was established in 1917 as the Shipbuilding Division of Mitsui & Co. with the first shipyard at Tamano. It built the first Japan-built diesel-propelled merchant ship, Akagisan Maru (赤城山丸) in 1924. With its success, it began manufacturing diesel engines under a license agreement with Burmeister & Wain in Denmark.
In 1937, the shipyards became a separate entity within the Mitsui zaibatsu, Tama Shipyard. The company changed its name to Mitsui Shipbuilding & Engineering Co., Ltd. in 1942. In 1948, Mitsui E&S built the first Japan-built ship to be exported after the loss of the Second World War, S.S.Knurr (a Norwegian whaling ship). In 1951, it started its chemical plants business by building a nylon production plant for Toray Industries.
In 1961, it built 'the world's first automated ship' Kinkasan maru (金華山丸) for Mitsui O.S.K. Lines. This ship was the first of its scale to control the entire engine room from the bridge, and other major parts of the ship were also automatically or remotely controlled from the bridge.
In 1967, as the container ship age dawned, it built its first gantry cranes for container ships. In 1975, it built the Berge Emperor, which was the longest ship ever built at that time, measuring 391.83m, for Bergesen d.y. in Norway.
Mitsui E&S acquired Burmeister & Wain's engineering and construction business in 1990, and through this acquisition, it also acquired Burmeister's boiler business in 2017, which primarily caters to small and medium biomass power plants.
Mitsui E&S split its naval and merchant shipbuilding businesses in 2021, selling the former (including the Tamano Shipyard) to Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and selling a 49% stake in the latter to Tsuneishi Shipbuilding. Tsuneishi took over a majority stake of the merchant shipbuilding business in 2022 as Mitsui E&S refocused its strategy on marine engines, port cranes, and other machinery.
In 2022, Mitsui E&S agreed to purchase IHI's marine engine business, and announced that it was in the process of developing ammonia-fueled marine engine technologies as a means of reducing CO2 emissions.
In 2025, Tsuneishi Shipbuilding took full ownership of the shipbuilding division of Mitsui Engineering & Shipbuilding.
From Wikipedia’s article on Mitsui E&S, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5