Lobith is situated on the spot where the ancient Batavii, famous for their courage and tenacity as well as for their trustworthiness, landed on Dutch soil. Here, ships have been built continuously throughout the centuries. In 1886, the first shipyard was established.

This yard was completely destroyed during World War Two, but although the capital elements of the shipyard: the offices, cranes, working premises and engines were lost, the spiritual heritage, the traditional knowledge and skill handed down from on generation to another, has survived.

After the war, when De Hoop yard was rebuilt with modern equipment this heritage was realised with improved skills producing beautiful, modern ships with highly sophisticated specifications.

In 1991 mr. Jan Reint Hoving Smit took over the yard. Mr. Smit led the yard into a new direction. From then on, the focus was to be on creating added value for the customer. To be able to do this, mr. Fré Drenth was hired as deputy director. The yard partly focussed on the inland passenger market, and was able to achieve a very strong position in that market. In the meantime, the yard also continued to build sea-going ships, such as the containership "Carmen Dolores".

One of the highlights of the nineties was the inland cruise vessel Henri Dunant III, built for the Dutch Red Cross. The keel laying was performed on April 13th 1995 by H.R.H. Princess Margriet, while the christening was performed on December 15th of the same year by Her Majesty Queen Beatrix. The photo shows Her Majesty and H.R.H. Princess Margriet besides the president of De Hoop, mr. Smit.

In January 1999, the former Verolme Shipyards Heusden was acquired by De Hoop and was named "Shipyard de Hoop Heusden". In 2001, De Hoop took over the shipyard Houma Fabricators in Louisiana, USA which was from then on called "Shipyard De Hoop of Houma". This way, the De Hoop group had a prime access to the American offshore market. This translated into a series of orders for various offshore suppliers, some of which were built on the Dutch yards, and some in the USA. The three yards (with each about 150 employees) complemented each other well, and together they could accept even more and bigger projects.

In 2004 mr. Patrick Janssens joined De Hoop's board of directors. Times where changed since the nineties and the decision was made to re-evaluate the Hoop's strategy. This showed on one side that not the number of locations or employees but the ever increasing financial demands on the market had become the limitation any yards capacity. On the other hand the market demanded an increased focus on knowledge based, hence innovative shipbuilding. The decision was made to consolidate to facilitate this strategy.
This meant that de Heusden yard was sold in 2005 and the Houma yard in 2006. The desinvestments made the Lobith yard a financially strong and independend firm, ready for the future. What stayed was the shipbuilding knowledge and designs all three yards. This formed the basis of a strong engineering branch which started up since 2005. Times where improving and also the market became stronger. In 2007 De Hoop acquired a small yard in the north of the Netherlands, in a place called Foxhol. Here De Hoop Foxhol” started with 60 former Volharding employees which meant that De Hoop had reached is optimum size for the chozen strategy. In oktober 2007, both yards where taken over by Patrick Janssens through a management buyout.

Shipyard De Hoop has a history of almost 1500 build vessels and more than 3000 designs. Although it is strong in the inland passengervessel and offshore markets, virtually any ship can be completely engineered and built by De Hoop. Examples of this are the transport vessels "Brion" and "Breuil" built for Airbus, the cable layer "Sea Spider" built for Wagenborg and the semi-submersible diving platform "Amethyst".