Navantia have launched the ‘Stalwart’, the second of two logistics vessels it is building for the Royal Australian Navy.
The ceremony took place at Ferrol’s shipyard at, coinciding with high tide.
During the event, the president of Navantia, Susana de Sarriá, has thanked the Australian Department of Defence and the Australian Navy for the trust placed in the Company, which has once again demonstrated its ability to design and build on time, quality products and services for the most competitive of markets.
She also highlighted the work of the Navantia staff, the collaborating industry, and the rest of the partners who have put all their effort and know-how on this boat.
Navantia’s president also announced that Ferrol’s shipyard will soon begin the implementation of an ambitious investment plan of more than €160 million digital transformation, in the face of F110 frigates.
These investments will generate more than 700 jobs over the next 5 years, to most companies in the area, say the firm.
Launched in August of this year, with both ships being based on the Cantabria class, which has operated alongside the RAN previously (though I still think they should have selected a Tide variant). The last Adelaide class frigate, HMAS Melbourne, was decommissioned in October, while the RNZN recently decommissioned two of its patrol ships.
Give them good practice for the RFA’s I suppose.
The Aussies have ambitious plans for their military, and it’s good to see.
They do ensure they buy what is needed in the numbers required. I would the UK do likewise.
Fortunately here in Oz both the two major political parties, the current Government (LNP, Centre Right) and the Opposition (ALP Centre Left), have pretty much a bipartisan approach to Defence and Security policy.
Yes they are like all political parties and will disagree on most other things, and try and throw crap at each other at any opportunity, but as I said, for the most part Defence is pretty much isolated from the day to day political crap.
Considering how many times we’ve change Government and Prime Ministers in the last couple of decades, defence has continued to benefit from growing funding levels and a consistent policy.
Cheers,
They do it because they cannot build them themselves. We bloody can and cheaper!
Just wondering if the British Government actually designed and built similar ships in the UK, would we be getting similar orders?
There was an uproar locally when Canberra decided to have these built overseas. Especially in Spain, where effectively, you are dealing with a nationalised industry. So, in effect, the Spanish can set the price wherever their government wants it to be, more or less. So long as they don’t make a loss “on paper”. Some would call it “dumping”, which, of course, is illegal in the EU!
Wouldn’t trust the Spanish Government as far as I could throw them.
Interesting reading some of the comments here, some are not particularly accurate either.
Yes I know the Poms hate the Spanish (can’t trust them!), and the Froggies, and the ….. (there is probably a long list), but here in Oz, we actually to have a good relationship with Spain and the Froggies, lots of countries, and even with you Poms too.
Australia received a good deal, and a very short deliver time, for the two Supply class AORs (based on SPS Cantabria), in fact Cantabria spent nearly a whole year here in 2013, that’s a pretty good ‘try before you buy’ exercise.
In the big scheme of things the cost of having the two AORs built in Spain is almost ‘beer money’, A$646m for the two ships (A$323m each), and that also included at least A$120m of Australian supplied equipment too. (In comparison the Canadians are reportedly paying more than C$2b to build their two new AORs, based on the German Berlin class locally).
https://www.defence.gov.au/SPI/Docs/Public%20AIC%20Plan%20-%20SEA1654-3%20Auxiliary%20Oil%20Replenishment%20Vessels%20-%20Navantia.pdf
The Naval Shipbuilding Program here in Oz is being funded to the tune of A$90b (yes A$90 BILLION) over the coming decades, 12 x OPVs, 9 x Hunter FFG, 12 x Attack SSGs, mine warfare, hydrographic survey, and a range of other ‘minor’ naval vessels, etc, etc.
The other fact is that the infrastructure at either of the two Naval shipbuilding yards (Osborne in SA and Henderson in WA), cannot build 20,000t ships, the floating dock and shiplift are limited to somewhere between 10,000t and 13,000t capacity.
Plenty of money is being spent on infrastructure at both the SA and WA locations to build the abovementioned OPVs, FFGs, SSGs, etc, but until it comes time, well into the future, to look at replacing the two 27,000t LHDs, HMAS Choules, the under construction Supply AORs, it’s not worth worrying about having a shipbuilding capacity greater than 13,000t.
If it’s cost effective to build or procure local, then the Government is doing that, on the other hand if the needs of the RAN are better served buying overseas, then that is happening too.
All in all, good times for the RAN.
Cheers,
Yes. Australia does not have the capacity or history of building ships like these, unlike Britain. There is no excuse for Britain to look to buying overseas and in our case it certainly does not save any money, but as a dominion of eu we are bound by eu rules that dictate we have to tender UK taxpayer funded ships abroad. One of the many reasons why we are leaving this nightmare empire. That aside, I do not know your sources of the price or costs of the two Supply Class ships, but even with this low figure, they seem very expensive ships. Other sources give between 1 to 2 billion US dollars for these smaller sized replenishment ships and considering the Cantabria herself was 300 million US Dollars back in 2005, it must be the case that there is some form of subsidy going on.
Australia is currently building 12 OPV’s and will soon begin construction of 9 8,000tonne Frigates based on the BAE Type 26, Australia will also be building 12 Conventional Subs and have just compted the 3rd Hobart Class Aegis DDG, a formidable platform, for a small Counrty Australia has developed high tech Military capabilities and Shipbuilding, fortunately Australia has also taken delivery of the first of 75 F35’s with an option for more.
Certainly the Australian Miltary is modernising completely and has the just about the best pay and conditions of any Military anywhere in the World. Thats why so many Poms are keen to Laterally transfer to the Australian Defence Force…not to mention the Weather !
Yep.
The EU rules dictating shipbuilding pertain to none military and national security ships. Others nations within the EU have listed there own naval and even coast guard under the national security clause in the EU to keep the production within their own nations and there is absolutely nothing that prevented the UK also doing so.
As for cost Australia budgeted 1 to 2 billion for program no break down given on acquistion, sustainment etc and what they paid was. Actual price was $640m AUD with an average EU to AUD exchange of 1.6 so just under 400 million euro. Adjusting for inflation and exchange rates that is roughly what the Berlin class cost circa 2000. Spain was already made to stop the subsidies half a decade ago and Navantia even forced to pay some of them back.
For the record the only nation paying $1 billion+ for a support ship is Canada and that is mostly because they are trying to keep the work all at home to build a particular kind of ships who infrastructure and skills wont benefit really any other project and with a very limited production run hence the high price tag. Yes the UK could build there own ships but in the 2000’s when your program to acquire 11 ships for the RFA was broken up you lost a chance at scale which made each ship more costly to build. If you were building the 11 one after the other then yep financially the UK could compete because continuous ship building is cheaper but building 4 here, 3 there and gaps in between all the production is just throwing money away.
The 640m AUD figure comes out to about 440m euros in 2016 and about 458m euros in 2019, or 398 million GBP. Roughly the cost to build the two Waves ships, although exchange rates can and have fluctuated much over the past 3 decades. But the Cantabria back in 2005 alone cost 238 million euros to build, so what is going on here unless design engineering with development has been removed from these two ships price, but still makes them very low compared to the original first ship? I find the price dubious, and more so with articles like these: https://www.defensenews.com/home/2016/03/11/australia-picks-navantia-to-build-two-replenishment-ships/ Maybe the 440m euros is just the build bit, with out the Australian and others input in material and work involved. Similar to the UK content bit for the Tides, to make them look cheaper, this was around 20-25% UK content.
Waves ships, albeit a tanker ship and possibly more simple, cost in today’s euros around 200 million, but that is for a far bigger ship too. Bigger does not mean cheaper though but more so with complex ships were more fitting out is easier done in bigger hulls.
As we are at last leaving this eu, non of these rules should effect us anymore now. But only recently we have this: https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2019/12/royal-netherlands-navy-closer-to-get-its-new-combat-support-ship-zr-ms-den-helder-from-damen/. Some state the ship will be built in it’s Romanian yard, but this suggest otherwise. The cost no matter where built, judging by past UK built ships (that were not built in huge batches of 12 ships), suggests the UK is very competitive in building these ships and that is with old facilities (Harland and Wolff aside) (Waves(two ships), Fort George/Victoria(two ships) and even the Bays(four ships) with all their problems caused by design changes etc. I think the biggest RFA number of ships built was in the 1970s with the Leaf and Fort Austin/Grange(Rosalie) ships. The Leafs were originally commercial ships that were in commercial colours before being taken into RFA service, but all this amounted to 6 ships. Most recently it has been two ships with the Fort Georges and two Waves, for supply ships, the Bays are a different form of military ship. But the UK has not in recent times (1970 onwards) embarked on a full on 11 RFA shipbuild program one after the other or staggered. In this day and age the savings in scale building is not so much, also Navantia have only built two ships, Daewoo built 4 ships with a smaller even more expensive ship for Norway, so where is the saving here?
The whole point here is that these are 3 steel intensive ships to be built that mean more meaningful pure shipbuilding than say the 8 type 26s and probably mean more steel work (shipbuilding) for the ship yards than the put together 8 type 26s and 5 type 31s which are more systems based.
RSS Sir David Attenborough, one ship at a competitive 150 million GBP price, but others who bid for this ship may well have had to design from similar parameters in which design development, engineering costs did not give them an advantage. So if we are saying we need to build abroad to save on the face of it (without the massive tax claw back taken into consideration and other benefits) a few quid because the UK design development and engineering cost a lot, is that fair considering more people are involved and more likely more wealth is spread through out the Country, rather than just the expensive UK design house.
The two carriers the UK has built is something in which only after building the first ship, massive gains were made very quickly in assembly. With offline programming digital and virtual shipyards and using this technology in shipbuilding, not as much can be gained nowadays from building 2 to 11 ships (a panel line is a panel line that does this offline, a repetitive job mass produced). The main gain is offsetting the design, development and engineering costs. So maybe we should purchase the design from abroad as who is to say we are any better at designing ships than others and why should that expense be mitigated by the UK shipbuilding bit. In truth I think both are important, but one must not be sacrificed for the other.
Also, is the whole process much more efficient when UK design and engineering talent is used together in the design and planning production of ships built within the UK along with all the material supply mostly coming from the UK too, instead it’s been the other way around and something Sir John Parker has picked up on at being not very efficient in his original report. Also, Australia supplying steel to these ships built in Spain?
The Berlins are very expensive ships and I would think most military ships built by other Countries would compare favourably in pure price terms, the Germans still get away with not having to build abroad too, in fact why did they not get the ships built in the UK? Even when this expensive, the Germans still look at tax clawback and benefits to the wider economy and keeping the money in Germany. They get around this by having a majority military crew and as can be seen, having a title to a certain ship that does the same thing a the RFA ship, has undermined the UK as usual which is not fair or right and I hope will be addressed in the future by the new UK government, as this is classed by Britons, as a p**s take entirely at our expense! That said even with all the problems of design changes political problems, bombs etc, the Fort 2s, Bays and Waves stand up well in terms of being competitively built and as I say coupled with tax back on ships that are built here in the UK along with most material and labour used, there is no excuse and reason to build abroad.
Considering these ships Fort 2s Waves and Bays were built using tech from over 10 years ago, it must make the case even more impressive for UK ships to be built in the UK.
The Australian ships as well as being small, are also expensive with virtually no tax back for the build, but as I say the amount required to regain this sort of shipbuild capacity gave Australia no choice and is one reason why the UK has no excuse to build abroad and must not do so. Spain officially was made to stop subsidies, but Spain does what Spain wants to do and those gains from past subsidies have helped long way into the future of this firm anyhow. Navantia were forced to pay some back, but they are owned by the Spanish Government. It does not mean anything.
Money being thrown away is if the UK has her ships built abroad. It’s that simple.
The infrastructure projects that are being put in place are themselves extremely impressive and bodes well for the future projected capabilities.
Unlike the UK for future ships beyond frigates and subs and to do with commercial shipbuilding.
Very expensive ships. I think the UK could have built them cheaper.
Delving into the world of military procurement is a murky business of smoke and mirrors and its difficult to know exactly how much taxpayer funds are spent on any given project.
One thing to note about Australian defence projects is that they often include either life-of-type costs extrapolated out over a service life of 20 to 30 years and/or their supporting infrastructure. In the case of the AORs there is a separately budgeted sub project (N2262) for onshore support facilities.
However, Australian industry participation in the actual ship’s construction is estimated to be in excess of $120 million including 4,500 tonnes of Australian steel for use in the construction of the second ship.
In the case of the RAN’s two new replenishment ships the costs for the two prime contractors are public – Navantia $652 million and Raytheon (systems integrator) $46 million totalling $698 million or around £373 million.
According to the Save the Royal Navy site the Tide Class prime contractor costs blew out to £550 million with a further £150 million on UK contractors for fitting out the vessels to naval standards then an additional £15 million contract for UK customisation or £715 million in total for 4 ships.
This means the Australian ships unit cost was around £186 million per ship with the UK ships around £178 million for each of the Tide class.
So what does all this prove? Not a great deal except maybe that Korean shipyards are slightly more cost effective than Spanish ones.
As to whether UK yards could have built them cheaper still, we can only speculate but cost blowouts on the UK built Type 45 and QE class don’t exactly inspire confidence.
Suffice it to say the Spanish ships are on time and on budget, which as taxpayers, is probably the best we can hope for.
To be absolutely fair to Big And Expensive (BAE) the cost creep on the QE class had far more to do with deliberate build slow down than anything else.
In fact the lack of cost creep, apart from that imposed, on the QE’s is the most remarkable part of the project.
The unit cost blowout on the T45 program had a lot to do with 12 -> 8 -> 6 numbers cuts so the 3Bn R&D was split over much fewer units. I am not saying that was the whole story but simple commercial maths dictates that it will have had a large part in the cost increases.
Yes and other Countries do not include certain items such as weapons in the total cost. Burkes as an example.
Sorry. I did not realize I had a reply via my email inbox.
Yes. Australia’s case is different to the UK’s and more so with the closure of the Cockatoo shipyard which built the last FSSS for Australia. Australia does not have the capability to built a ship like this at the moment and these 2 ships would not be enough to justify creating a new shipyard even with tax claw back. The UK on the other hand easily has the capability, despite the excuses of lack of capacity for the Tides when the Carriers were being built (the extra two years did not help though). In effect a new shipyard was created which was said to be SwanHunters further north (as many personnel from Swans were involved I believe). I think it was Peter Luff who said I think we got away with it, as in it did not cause uproar and their spin worked as all the excuses were used including, we don’t build ships like these or built like these for a long time etc, even though we had built tankers more recently than frigates. The capacity thing was an excuse because for the carriers many sites were seen as suitable as suppliers and final assembly and seen to have the labour there, like Inchgreen, Harland and Wolff, Nigg, Graythorp, Wallsend SwanHunters, along with other main suppliers of hull blocks like Pallion, Swan Hunters (Port Clarence), Hartlepool Heerema, Burntisland, and many others, so why not for the Tides? Costs? Going off tack.
Navantia is state owned and no real figure on cost and price can be known let alone exchange rates (which vary over time) and dates etc. Australia participation in this is very small (like the UK with the Tides) so hardly any tax claw back can be realized.
If the tax claw back has been factored in for Australia and with the closing of the Cookatoo shipyard which meant Australia had no way of building these ships fair enough, but it is different for the UK which does have the capability and the tax claw back is massive, which means it does not make any sense to build abroad, which happened with the stupidity and industrial suicide with those those Tides class ships being given away. The cost of creating shipyard capabilities in Australia could well outweigh the benefit of building them there until and unless BAE create a capable shipyard to build all types of Australian warship including logistics military ships. So I take your point.
In the case of the UK the tax claw back is seen as a conservative 40%. Ships like the Fleet Solid Support Ships (which I assume this article is trying to relate too in terms of the Navantia Spanish government bid) these will have a higher UK content unlike the more complex warships which are 70% or lower UK content. The Fleet Solid Support Ships are still, a more steel intensive ship, i.e Plate (Scunthorpe, Dalzell, Cumberslang), Section Skinningrove, Pipe Hartlepool with navigation and some propulsion systems possibly sourced from abroad.
Yes, the end cost for the ship build part of the four Tides was 550 million quid and that’s 550 million less a conservative 40% tax claw back so in effect they cost 550 divide by 60 then multiply by 100% gives 916 million pounds for the build or some say… 550 million divide by 100 is 5.5 million multiply by 60% gives 330 million and add to the 550 million which is 880 million pounds for the gross build only in South Korea, so anyhow, a hugely more expensive cost to build abroad for a Country that can do this herself and cheaper with far more benefit if manufactured in the UK. I cannot see the UK building (not including the UK content bit, just the build bit as with South Korea) 4 tankers at this size costing more than 916 or 880 gross million pounds, that’s not including the 150m and 15 million which we can claw back in tax, so around a billion pounds plus for four tankers. A comparison to the cost of the Waves makes for interesting study.
The 150 million pound UK content apart from design (which I assume was most of this?) any other big items must have been installed whilst at the Shipyard in South Korea. Also how much of the UK content was purchased from abroad?
The Unit costs are 186 million pounds 2016 for 19500 ton (full load) ships to 178 million pounds in 2012 for 38000 tons (full load) ships of the Tide class.
So for the UK, being that the South Korean built Tides were not value for money for the UK taxpayer (an excuse all UK governments use on the British people) the Spanish option must be far worse if you say the South Korean option is less.
The cost blow outs are usually due to people who do not make the ships, i.e politicians and officials who have made UK shipbuilding look bad and caused a lack of dynamic and proper investment in facilities and people.
The Bay ships are one example in which it is said that many changes to design on an already unfair low price caused the demise of SwanHunters. When the NAO reviewed this it was said that the prices in the end were accurate including the cost escalation, because the prices put in were so low.
The Type 45s unit production costs were 661 million pounds, compared to the flight IIA Arleigh Burke class destroyer production cost of 1441 million pounds at the same time. The UK includes the missile systems and weapons to give a higher figure than the production costs. The longer build time is mostly due to government and MoD practice. There is no incentive to build quick.
The British Super Carriers were slowed down by 2 years, by government delaying pay and accepting a higher cost. This along with a look into a re-design for smaller carriers, then back to the big carrier without much armour and other items led to a higher cost in the region of nearly 2 billion pounds, not the fault of the shipbuilders. HMS Prince of Wales was built and assembled in a short time, but build time in the UK starts from steel cut, not keel or section/block placed or laid down on the building berth as with cruise ships built in Europe as an example. The build of such big and complex ships is a tribute to UK shipbuilders and the real price and time taken is really far lower if it were not for the people who caused the cost and delay. So the Type 45s, the Bays and certainly the Carriers are not examples of costly and long building times. In fact, the opposite because of what UK shipbuilders had too and still have to face with UK officialdom. Is does not do them justice.
In the end, The UK built two super carriers in a shorter time than other Country has done and they are cheap, have the ability to adapt, grow in size and displacement and capability. Something the UK has not built since the 70s (the little Invincibles) and not contemplated in size and design since the 40s (Malta’s) and 60s (CVA 01 and 2).
The Spanish Cantabria between 2005 to 2007 did cost 238 Million Euros.
Cammell Laird has just built a complex ship, the RSS Sir David Attenborough for just 150 million pounds (gross I assume) in 2015.
Are we going to throw the baby out with the bath water? Is there an agenda by all UK governments to end good healthy heavy industry in the UK?