Germany, Norway and Canada Open the 212CD Planning Phase at Kiel — the Canadian Contract Is Still Unsigned
Kiel, 10 August 2026
Key points
- Representatives of Germany, Norway and Canada met TKMS, Kongsberg and Multiconsult in Kiel at the end of July for the first joint planning event of the 212CD programme, announced by TKMS on 10 August
- Four days on the next programme phases, multilateral working structures and the preparation of contract negotiations, with foundations laid for cooperation between the navies, procurement organisations and industry; formalisation talks follow in the coming weeks
- The event came three weeks after Canada named TKMS preferred supplier for the Canadian Patrol Submarine Project on 6 July, for up to twelve boats
- Chief sales officer Thomas Keupp called the selection "a significant milestone"
- Chief executive Oliver Burkhard, the same day: "The real work starts now. We must negotiate to reach a contract. We don't have it yet." He would not say whether the order comes in tranches or at once, and said any earnings lift will "take a while"
- Separately on the record: the first MEKO A-200 frigate to the German navy by the end of 2029, then one every seven months
Germany, Norway and Canada opened the 212CD programme's first joint planning phase with TKMS, Kongsberg and Multiconsult at Kiel in late July — while the company's chief executive spent the day the event was announced saying the Canadian order is not yet a contract.
The four-day event was the operational start of the multilateral arrangement rather than a ceremony. Its agenda was the sequencing of the next programme phases, the establishment of working structures across three governments and three companies, and the groundwork for contract negotiations; TKMS says formalisation talks follow within weeks, with Canada entering as a full programme participant. Chief sales officer Thomas Keupp's public line stayed at the level of the milestone.
Oliver Burkhard's did not. In his first substantial interview since the July selection, the chief executive declined to say whether the up-to-twelve-boat Canadian order would arrive in tranches or at once, said any earnings effect would take time, and noted the company is still working through pre-2022 legacy orders struck at less favourable terms. On the frigate programme Berlin took from Rheinmetall in June, he allowed only that the competitor "may have underestimated the complexity". The delivery commitments he did put on the record are firm: the first MEKO A-200 to the German navy by the end of 2029, then one every seven months, against a company history that includes the years-late F125. Deutsche Bank projects the order book to more than double to well above EUR 40 billion.
Ottawa still holds an exit, and Kiel was where it got more expensive. A preferred-supplier selection binds nobody; what a joint planning phase does is accumulate switching costs on the customer's side of the table before the seller has committed capital — navy-to-navy arrangements, shared procurement structures and a work breakdown that a second bidder would have to reproduce from nothing. The caution reads less like investor management than an accurate description of where the leverage sits, and of a constraint the interview did not name: German and Norwegian boats already occupy the build slots Canadian hulls would enter. Großwald recorded both the planning event and the interview in Signal No. 120. Two dates test it — the Canadian signature TKMS aims to reach by year-end, and the first MEKO A-200 delivery promised for the end of 2029.
Related · The 212CD programme
