[1] Before the merger, as a technical supervisory organization, Germanischer Lloyd conducted safety surveys on more than 7,000 ships with over 100 Mio GT.

On 16 March 1867, a group of 600 shipowners, shipbuilders and insurers met in the big hall of the Hamburg Stock Exchange on the occasion of the founding convention of Germanischer Lloyd.

As an independent classification society, Germanischer Lloyd was created to evaluate the quality of ships and deliver the results to shipowners, merchants, and insurers.

First classifications were based on construction rules developed by Friedrich Schüler, a shipbuilder from Stettin-Grabow, Prussia (later the German Empire).

By 1869, GL had surveyors in a dozen German seaports and outside Germany in St Petersburg, Copenhagen, London, Liverpool, Amsterdam, Istanbul, Swatow, Amoy, Penang, and Singapore.

In 1894 as the economic situation improved, Germanischer Lloyd decided to extend its service by teaming up with the German maritime authority See-Berufsgenossenschaft [de] (SeeBG), which was founded in 1887.

While the SeeBG issued rules for accident prevention and checked for their compliance, GL provided support as technical adviser.

Following the war, Germany's economic recovery led to rapid development: within seven years the classed tonnage increased from 400,000 to three million GT.

In the autumn of 2006, French rival Bureau Veritas launched a hostile takeover bid but this was defeated through the support of Hamburg-based entrepreneur Günter Herz.

According to annually published Port State Control statistics, Germanischer Lloyd has been ranking amongst the top classification societies.

The merger with Noble Denton[8][9] (UK) in 2009 further expanded its activities in offshore technical services and the acquisitions of PVI[10][11] (Canada) in 2007, MCS[11] (US) in 2008, and IRS (Singapore) in 2009 grew its inspection business.

In the renewables segment, GL acquired Helimax (Canada) in 2007, Windtest (Germany) in 2008 and merged with Garrad Hassan[12][13] (UK) in 2009 making it the world's largest renewable energy consultancy with more than 600 dedicated engineers providing technical consulting services to the onshore and offshore wind, wave, tidal, and solar industries.

It is active in 18 countries with major bases in the UK, US, Canada, Germany, Spain, Denmark, Italy, India, and China.

The software could be applied to the design and optimization of ship hulls, propellers, appendages, turbine blades, pump casings, and other types of functional, flow-exposed surfaces.