Founded in 1795 as a wharf for the construction of wooden ships, Josef Lambert Meyer started the construction of iron ships in 1874. Until 1920 there were more than 20 dockyards in the Papenburg area. Today, Meyer Werft is the only remaining shipyard in Papenburg. For more than six generations, it has been a privately held and family owned company.

 It gained international recognition through the construction of roll on/roll off ferries, passenger ferries, gasoline tankers, container ships, livestock ferries and most recently luxury cruise ships.

Meyer is one of the largest and most modern shipyards in the world with 2300 employees, and home to the by far largest roofed dry docks in the world. The first covered dock was inaugurated in 1987 and was 370 meters long, 101,5 meters wide and 60 meters high. In 1990/91 the dock was extended by an additional 100 meters. In 2000, a second covered dock was built, which is announced to be extended to a full length of 504 meters, a width of 125 meters and height of 75 meters in order to compete with Asian shipyards. Meyer Werft will as a result of this be able to build 3 cruise ships a year.

Current cruise liner projects include the Solstice Class; Celebrity Solstice, Celebrity Equinox, Celebrity Eclipse, Celebrity Silhouette and fifth ship for Celebrity Cruises (owned by Royal Caribbean International), which are the largest ships ever constructed in a German shipyard. Meyer Werft is also constructing the six ships of AIDA Cruises' Sphinx Class, the AIDAdiva,AIDAbella, AIDAluna, AIDAblu, and the two following unnamed ships. Meyer Werft is also constructing two new ships for Disney Cruise Line. The Disney ships will be the largest ships ever built at Meyer Werft.

Due to its upstream location on the river Ems, the giant ships to be delivered have to make a 36 km voyage to the Dollart bay and which each time attracts thousands of spectators. Up until the completion of the Ems river barrier ("Emssperrwerk") in 2002, the journey was only possible at high tides.