CVC takes majority stake in Cernaval

CVC DIF, the infrastructure arm of CVC, completed the acquisition of a majority stake in Cernaval in 2026. Founder Mario López sold the majority while retaining a holding and continuing to support the company. Established more than thirty years ago, Cernaval repairs, maintains and converts commercial vessels at its yard in the Bay of Algeciras, in southern Spain. Ships arrive for scheduled dry-docking, for repairs after damage or breakdown, and for conversion work that modifies them for a different trade or to meet new emissions rules. The yard operates a 400-metre dry dock, a 230-metre floating dock, quays and workshops, which allow it to take vessels up to the largest commercial sizes. It employs around 275 people and worked on 68 ships in 2025. Its customers are shipowners and maritime operators. The business rests on a long-term concession at the Port of Algeciras Bay, on the Strait of Gibraltar, through which more than 120,000 vessels pass each year. That position is what makes the yard viable: a ship diverted for repair loses revenue for every day it is off its route, so owners choose yards close to the lanes they already sail. Algeciras sits on the second-busiest maritime corridor in the world, and the concession means the capacity cannot easily be replicated alongside it. CVC DIF planned to modernise the yard, widen the range of work it can take on, and tighten its commercial and operational processes, alongside investment in digitalisation and energy efficiency. The Algeciras port authority had itself committed 677 million euros of investment to 2030, with a further 711 million expected from private sources in port-related projects.