A new report from the Council on Geostrategyhighlights the urgent need for revitalising Britain’s maritime industries to drive innovation, boost economic growth, and enhance national security.
The Sea Power Laboratory Primer, authored by Dr Emma Salisbury, outlines several key recommendations for His Majesty’s Government (HM Government) to overcome barriers and unlock long-term opportunities for British maritime success.
The Primer underscores the strategic importance of naval and commercial shipbuilding, port services, undersea infrastructure, and offshore renewable energy in maintaining Britain’s global competitiveness.
However, these sectors face significant challenges, including outdated facilities, a shortage of skilled workers, and gaps in maritime-specific training. To address these issues, the report calls for coordinated efforts across government departments and industry stakeholders.
Dr Salisbury emphasised the urgency of action, stating: “Reinvigorating these once-mighty industries would be valuable for promoting not only national security, but also a stronger British economy and the prosperity of communities around shipyards, ports, and maritime manufacturing sites around the country.”
The report suggests the creation of a Maritime Skills Passport and a comprehensive workforce plan to address labour shortages and skill development in the maritime sector.
Government contracts for shipbuilding should prioritise innovation, sustainability, and manufacturing growth, the Primer contends, with a focus on closer collaboration within the National Shipbuilding Office. Dr Salisbury added: “HM Government should grasp the considerable opportunities to rejuvenate the whole British maritime-industrial base, from shipbuilding to ports to offshore energy and beyond. A Britain with a sustainable and revitalised maritime sector will be safer, stronger, greener, and more prosperous over the long term.”
Increased government demand, sustained investment in research and development, and improved collaboration between departments—including the Ministry of Defence, Department of Business and Trade, and HM Treasury—are seen as vital components for success.
The report highlights the potential for British shipyards to drive both economic and defence-related gains if long-term commitments to domestic shipbuilding are secured.
It always concerns me when people in cities like London think it would be great if people in cities like Newcastle, Glasgow and Belfast get trained up in a industry that’s notoriously perilous and has extremely low productivity and GVA metrics to tick some box of national pride.
Shipyards don’t drive economic growth, go to Japan and South Korea and see the effect on an advanced economy of heavy industry past its prime.
We should build warships that we ourselves are prepared to buy and that’s it.
Get rid of this nonsense idea that the UK can export ships or build low end commercial vessels like Ferry’s, we can’t and all it does it devastates the same places that have had to put up with this nonsense for a century.
And yet we’re on the cusp of exporting the T26 to Norway!!! Go figure :).
And you seem to forget that even if we export a design, because the design incorporates loads of UK made assemblies and components there’s a huge down stream supply chain benefit. And that’s where the money is, not in welding bits of steel together but the complex components and assemblies, which then creates an after market spares, service and support benefit which is usually larger than the original contract to supply the parts in the first place. So we absolutely must build vessel other want to build or buy.
It depends on how much tech you use to make the ships.
One of the advantages of starting again from scratch and having a labour shortage is that we are going full pelt at automation in a way that would have been unthinkable in the 1990’s.
I fully agree that we have exported the T26 and T31 designs to other countries and QEC was seriously looked at too.
As you correctly say the supply chain of the high value precision engineering bits is where the value add is.
But if we don’t build complex ships in volume that bit of high value precision engineering will die.
So to go full circle to @Jim’s opening comment. The margins on high end naval ship building are actually quite good as it isn’t at commodity levels. That is more debatable at the T31 end of the market where a large barge is being built with fewer weapons systems fitted from the off.
Yep. T 31 with imported engines, CMS and guns.
With T31 is was alluding to fabrication approach.
Yes, we might secure a small frigate order, the only one in fifty years and I emphasise might. Somehow I can’t see me recommending my son to go into ship building in the UK.
I agree the money is not in welding bits of steel together. The design work is done where exactly? Certainly not in Belfast. I believe it’s done in Bath high end southern based design jobs requiring people in the north to build skills in badly paid manufacturing jobs. This is why the country is imbalanced.
I suggest you go and look at the car parks in the ship yards.
You will gulp at the number of expensive cars there are….Barrow for a great example!
Report back and let me know if you think the roles are ‘low wage’……
Yes, you will note I left Barrow out, Barrow has guaranteed work for decades and building SSN’s is one of the hardest things to do on the planet. Barrow also has much of the design staff located there. Few if any live in Barrow because the town itself still suffers from the historic ship building legacy being one of the most deprived areas in the UK.
Belfast is a very different story. It’s taking on thousands of young workers to assemble steel blocks for ships designed in Bath and constructed in Spain, there are just three ships ordered and little chance of any follow on work. Even if there is follow on work it will be for three MRSS which will stave off closure at the yard for 6 years at most.
I’m all for us building our own warships with our own money. I’m just against pretending that we can do anything else. All we are doing is setting vulnerable communities up for a fall and tricking young people in to dead end careers. There is zero appetite in the UK government on either side for a larger navy and no need for three yards to support the surface fleet.
There is no chance the UK can build a successful commercial ship building industry as this article outlines.
It’s a fantasy.
Small frigste order? The T26 is going to cost 1 billion each and they need a minimum of 5!!!
On salaries that’s back to investment in higher productivity. It always the case that those who can program and maintain high end manufacturing kit get paid more than those who did the job it replaced.
In part I see the point you are making Jim. However, ships are not going away and we have an obsolete Royal Navy – or, at least – a very lopsided one. The problem is, these reports come and they go without that much happening that is of a long term thought through strategy. Is there anyone left in lighyy who thinks we have a national interest focussed civil service leave alone government?
lightyy? Blighty
What happened to the edit button (Leave my eyesight out of this!)
Haha Barry- you are unwittingly writing “Sarf Efrican ” slang. A lighty here is a young inexperienced lad who generally knows very little 🙂
In the end if the governments for the last 30 years had actually ordered warships on time and to the numbers required for the RN we would have a very large and capable ship building industry.. out own orders would be plenty if they were needed and not hashed up
The reality is the RN should have a single 20 strong frigate force, 10 AAW destroyer force 15 patrol and mine warfare ships, 6 littoral strike vessels…replaced every 20-25 years
That’s plenty of warships to keep 3 yards running.. then you have the mass and capacity that if someone wants 2-4 frigates you just flog them off your open production slots.. just like the Italians keep doing.
Got to love all these report about UK maritime industry, they make it look like its in bad shape. But take the south coast of England there’s 2 boat builders collectively producing £700m of boats every year, that’s about 2 T31s or over 1 FSS by value, so by value annually these boat yards produce more new product than Rosyth by some margin I would think also the Clyde yards and they do this without any government help, intervention or orders, in fact they rely mostly on export orders!!!
Which 2 would those be? Sunseeker in Poole, and who else?
There are also several small yards building workboats and CTVs for the offshore industry, especially around Cowes, with Diverse marine and Wight Shipyard Co.
Princess yachts, its bigger than Sunseeker.
Re-vitalise the high-value supply-chain. Not much needs to be done to the yards which isn’t already in hand. I know MTU are assembling engines for BOXER in England now, is any naval engine work done here? Shafts and propellers all made abroad now, lots of electricals too. It feels like we’re slowly doing less and less radar and sonar work? Those are the high-value and high sovereignty-risk areas we should be focussing on, not re-opening another yard that can’t be sustained, as I fear will happen with Belfast.
Problem with radar and sonar is that someone has to order something sometime….
RN combatants fleet is now so small. BAE have 7 sets of SAMPSON and 10 sets of ARTISAN [8 T26 and 2x QEC] down from 17 sets [13 T23 + 2x Albion + 2x QEC] not long ago.
The issue is that sustaining an upgrade pathway per set gets eye watering expensive with that kind of drop in deployed numbers.
This is where short term savings on hull numbers are buying as the upgrade and sustainment costs won’t be much different as you need the same software and hardware teams to develop an upgrade for one unit or twenty units.
We would have a very good ship building industry if the RN, MOD and treasury actually bothered to order the ships needed.
The RN should never have dropped below
20 frigates of a common type
10 destroyers
15 patrol and mine warfare ships
6 littoral strike/amphibious vessels
2 carriers
That’s 5 programs that should have keep 3 yards churning out ships on a constant basis.. with easy opportunities to flog ships straight of the production slots.. because the RN was full equipped with new hulls.
I can’t last remember when RN had 20 of any combatant of a common type?
Highest I can remember are 16 x T23?
Before it all went to shit, it was looking at 20 common type frigates..10 with a GP load and 10 ASW, it even as a most conservative option was assessing making the whole fleet essentially 30 type 45 variants.. 10 AAW destroyer T45s, 10 decked out as GP Frigates with reduced radars ect and 10 with quite hulls and towed arrays..
Largest RN programme was the Type 12 ( type12, type12m and type 12l ) programmes with 39 frigates built between 1953 and 1973…so the RN can do a long term high hull numbers building programme.
Type 12 was of a different era of smaller simpler ships and matelots who would sleep in a hammock!
The T45 variant proposal was never a particularly serious idea. Anybody who has done 5 mins of naval architecture would tell you why – the hull is fundamentally wrong for ASW.