UK ministers have identified Inchgreen Dry Dock in Greenock as a potential hub for defence manufacturing, but urged site owner Peel Ports to “step up” after years of decline, according to the Greenock Telegraph.
At a summit in Inverclyde chaired by Scottish Secretary Douglas Alexander, the dry dock was put firmly on the radar of the UK’s largest defence firms.
The meeting, which followed talks between Alexander and Inverclyde MP Martin McCluskey, now serving as energy security minister, aimed to showcase the potential of Inchgreen for future contracts as defence spending increases.
The Telegraph reported that Alexander, visiting the site before the summit, said he was struck by its scale and untapped capacity. “I walked Inchgreen this morning and even though I know Inverclyde, I had not realised the scale of the Inchgreen site, the largest dry dock in the whole of the west coast of the United Kingdom, that was able to berth for Queen Elizabeth,” he said. “It gives you the scale of the opportunity.”
He added that the site had seen “remedial work” and now has a new electrical substation and significant facilities, but insisted there is “a responsibility on Peel Ports as well as the local authority to seize the opportunities of the future.”
“There is an asset here that for more than 20 years has not fulfilled its economic potential,” Alexander said. “If you get this right, it has the potential to secure new opportunities for the future.”
The intervention follows years of controversy over Inchgreen’s condition and management. The Telegraph noted that campaigners have long criticised the site’s decline since its 2003 transfer to Peel Ports, and that recent “secret” plans to spend £3 million of public money on upgrades were met with opposition after previous redevelopment attempts failed.
McCluskey told the paper that the new focus on defence jobs could give Inverclyde a renewed industrial footing. “Whatever work we end up with on the site, whether defence or other work, we need to move at pace,” he said. “I believe that this site is the best chance we have got for jobs and manufacturing in this area. We need to take advantage of the assets we have got in terms of maritime and river, that is where our future is.”
Both politicians pointed to opportunities linked to recent defence spending announcements, including £250 million in new UK defence proposals, £182 million for technical excellence colleges, and the £10 billion contract for Type 26 frigates currently being built on the Clyde.
According to the Telegraph, both men made clear that any revival of Inchgreen’s fortunes would depend on partnership between the UK Government, Inverclyde Council, and Peel Ports, which was urged to take a more proactive role after years of neglect.
What work would it realistically get other than QE refit work? MRSS or whatever the latest rebrand is will be compact enough to use Rosyth and Birkenhead, and in total we are going to have fewer large ships in 5-10 years time than we did 5 years ago, unless the Amphib fleet is miraculously recapitalised. It’s a huge dock that will require a lot of investment to properly get going when you include the fact that there are next to no warehousing, fabrication, and office facilities on the site any more, which is probably why Peel Ports have been sitting on their hands all these years.
Emergency dry docking for QEC and other large ships could be handy
I don’t think that Inchgreen can dock QEC because of the sill height.
Give it a few years !
(Sea Levels and stuff !)
I think it’s 0.5m lower than Rosyth, I seem to remember reading that part of the original spec was so they could handle CVA01 and the big US Super carriers in an emergency. The latter would have made a hell of a lot of sense in the 60’s when the USN regularly exercised in the GIUK Gap and they all had a greater draught than QE’s.
No they don’t. Hull draught and depth is the same.
It might be a new site for Ferguson’s to move to. Give them a chance to expand. That huge drydock. Could be serrated for use .
That huge drydock could be a game changer for Ferguson to move into. More space and that drydock could be segregated into separated into different drydocks for different jobs.
it’s a shame that opportunities like this go so long before someone identifies a place’s potential like this. manufacturing capacity hass been left to wither on the vine. get cracking on it now while it can be done faster than leaving it AND THEN decide to do it.
You only have to look at Rosyth and see how many cruise ships are regularly parked there to see there is plenty of work for ship repair and refurbishment.
However fat government contracts won’t deliver that kind of work.
If peel ports is not up to the job then the government should force a sale and offer emergency docking contract as a sweetener.
Especially with Faslane near by this could be very important.
Yes. Peel Ports have clung onto the real estate hoping for something for too long, refusing any realistic deal. Time to bring in eminent domain.
To be fair if Peel hadn’t owned it the chances are it would have been filled in by now.
Why would Peel spend ££££ when there was, up till recently, no market for it?
Babcock upgraded which fired BAE to upgrade and then offers flowed.
A line of commercial work is needed to justify the spend on warehousing and facilities. Probably a £500m project on just that.
Then you need to train and generate a workforce which costs a lot of ££.
👍🏻
With out knowing the facilities or anything about the condition of the dock, could this be a potential dock for the fitting out of the T26 If the drum beat of the hulls is picked up?
There’s no facilities there
Fair enough but with the speed and drive there was to build the Janet Harvey build hall, I guess new upto date facilities could be built if there is the money and desire?
Exactly! We have become inured to low expectations and decline. Here is something gifted to us from a more energised time. I am quite certain berths of the carriers and expanding Type 26 fleet will be necessary to maintain tempo.
I’d hop so, fitting out seems to take forever to finish.
Andy the first one was always going to take ages, in many ways the T26 is a massive generational leap in technology, in some ways they are almost as complex as an Astute. The other issue is BAe is having to do this and also rebuild most of its skilled workforce who do this work from scratch, they didn’t have any complex outfitting after the last T45 (Duncan) left Scotstoun in 2012. So it largely folded, but the next one will be quicker and they will get their swing back.
Our ABC Rodney has mentioned this strategic asset often.
All it needs is some big cranes and some fabrication spaces and it could be a great MoD-owned site for refits.
When it isn’t doing carriers you could use it for MRSS, RFAs or foreign vessels, and it would allow Rosyth to focus on shipbuilding. I am slightly worried though that if it all hits the stops in the DIP, having 3 carrier-sized docks, 2 frigate factories and 2 block feeders (Appledore and Cammel Laird) might feel like overkill.
Can you imaging how well that would play to Labours union friends?
Conservatives order the frigates etc to get modern facilities and trained workers and Labour don’t follow through?
Labour wouldn’t be able to say ‘industrial vandalism’ again with a straight face.
Problem is that T26 is choka with the Norwegian order till 2035+
So my feeling is we will get another batch if T31+ as it allows ‘do something’ without spending very much.
We won’t be getting any more frigates, have you seen the budget cuts
I hope you’re right and that Labour fondness for steel bashing carries shipbuilding through. Defence is certainly a better way of creating jobs than forcing through ferry builds, as the more complex the work the better the quality of the jobs.
If we get Inchgreen up and running as a carrier dock that puts both Rosyth and Belfast in a position to build full-sized MRSS, which is another steel bashing project.
My record was stuck 🤔
If BAE have two drydock occupied with fitting out works could Inchgreen and it’s keys be used for upgrades while new builds are on the go?
Nice huge drydock however, no warehouses, and no workshops. To be fair… with the total lack of infrastructure, and that dock being so enormous, I cannot see what it might actually be used for.
TBH you can build warehouses very quickly.
The main thing it has going for it is a decent area round it so it can be optimised for workflows.
The downside is that it is so enormous that a T26 would look lost in it….
And several companies build large shipbuilding cranes off the shelf, so that wouldn’t be vastly expensive.
All it needs to be is a back up for the Rosyth dry dock so that QE refits can be done while MRSS is built on the East coast, and then it could branch out into cruise liners or replace the Camel Laird refit capacity if they want to do shipbuilding again.
Tbh if we use it specifically as a refit and maintenance facility it could just be government owned as an extension of HMNB Clyde.
Along with regenerating the facilities at Belfast and its huge Drydock it really would make a lot of sense to get Inchgreen back into use. Whilst everyone is fixated on the QE’s they tend to forget that the FSS will have a beam of 34.5m which will add 3 more potential customers.
And then there is a eternal issue regarding Faslane, a single Synchrolift (single point of failure), a MOD “Project” for 2 Floating Drydocks which seems to have gone very quiet (quite where you could build one in U.K is a mystery to me). Why bother if you can use Inchgreen instead ?
Just did the math, you can get 4 in at a time. 🤔
“The largest dry dock in the whole of the west coast of the United Kingdom” -Ahem, Belfast??
Just used measure distance on Google maps, would be a squeeeze to get a QE class in that dock
It’s only 5m shorter than the Rosyth dock and significantly wider, so I don’t think there’d be a problem.
The dock also holds its depth all of the way to the far end so there would be no issues with bow domes like there are on other docks.
Feck me , How do you know all this stuff ?
I wish I was Clever like wat u is.
What about Southampton’s KGV Dock ? how big is that ? Nice and close to Portsmouth and probably nicer weather than Scotland.
A quick Google Earth/Wikipedia skim later…
Jesus Christ that thing is big. Were it still in working order it would be an excellent option, though it is right in the middle of Southampton commercial port. The problem is, its lock gates have been removed because it has been used as a wet dock since 2005 and it has generally been neglected for the last decade (used as a loading dock for bulk cargo, but still a working port).
You’d have to get it off ABP first, then spend a LOT of money turning it back into a working dry dock. As an idea of what it would cost, it was £124m to build (inflation adjusted) in 1933, imagine how much more that would be now!
It’s not just the Caisson that’s the issue, the pump house was gutted, the base of the dock was subjected to a very intense fire and there is very little space around it for infrastructure.
It’s one of the big issues with lots of former shipyards and maritime facilities, the land was flat, waterfront and cheap so gobbled up for commercial or housing use.
Christ, How Much ? Wow, that must have been some Investment back then.
OK, thanks for the “Reality Check” 😁 It was just that I knew it was there !
£2m at the time, which is still about the same as the Queen Elizabeth class battleships cost.
Perfect place to dismantle the old nuclear subs
You do know we are spending an absolute fortune on Rosyth and Devonport to do precisely that, so adding a 3rd would be overkill. Besides which it doesn’t have a Nuclear licence and getting one isn’t easy (I know this because my former place of work has 2 of them for very different reasons).