EXCLUSIVE – Plans to replace two ageing Scottish Government marine vessels have been delayed beyond earlier indications, with officials formally resetting expectations after months of inactivity following an initial market notice.
In June 2025, the Scottish Government published a Prior Information Notice on Public Contracts Scotland for the Marine Vessel Replacement Project, covering the planned replacement of the Marine Protection Vessel Minna and the Marine Research Vessel Scotia. The notice outlined a potential future contract for the design and build of new patrol and research vessels and was accompanied by a Request for Information to gather market input. While the notice made clear that the exercise was not a tender or pre-qualification process, it included an estimated contract notice publication date of 22 September 2025. That estimate provided industry with an expectation of when the programme might progress into formal procurement. No contract notice, Single Procurement Document, or other procurement milestone was published by that date, and no further updates appeared on Public Contracts Scotland during the remainder of 2025.
UK Defence Journal contacted the Scottish Government in late December 2025 seeking clarification on the status of the project and why no procurement activity had followed the earlier market engagement. A follow-up email was sent earlier this month. Later that day, the Scottish Government amended the original procurement notice with a new entry titled “Programme Timelines Update”.
The addition stated: “We are not in a position to progress to SPD stage at this time. However, we have updated our website(s) with additional information on the concept designs which we hope is useful. Please note that no dates are available at this stage.”
The update was added directly to the live procurement record, revising the expectations created by the earlier estimated timeline and indicating to industry that the programme was not moving into procurement in the near term. The clarification coincided with the publication of new government material on the same day outlining concept designs for future compliance and research vessels.
The webpage now describes the work as preparatory and frames the replacement of Minna and Scotia in broad terms, stating that the government hopes to replace the vessels “in the coming years”. The concept material focuses on potential design features such as modern propulsion technologies, improved sustainability, and enhanced operational efficiency. It contains no reference to tendering, competition, or anticipated procurement milestones, reinforcing the position that the project remains at an early planning stage.
Additional context emerged through a written parliamentary answer published on 13 January 2026 in response to a question from Paul Sweeney MSP. Asked whether the vessels could be directly awarded to a UK shipbuilder under national security exemptions, Rural Affairs Secretary Mairi Gougeon ruled out that approach. The minister added that shipbuilding operates in a highly competitive global market and that any procurement would need to comply fully with procurement and subsidy control legislation. She also underlined that the vessels are merchant-class assets rather than defence platforms, built and operated to civilian standards, and therefore the Scottish Government position is that they fall outside defence-related exemptions under section 45 of the Subsidy Control Act.
The decision to amend the procurement notice itself, rather than relying solely on correspondence or policy webpages, suggests a deliberate effort to correct market expectations following the missed estimated date. Although Prior Information Notices do not create binding commitments, the Scottish Government’s own amendment confirms that the next stage of procurement is not imminent. At present, the replacement of Minna and Scotia remains framed as a longer-term ambition, with no dates set for issuing a tender, awarding a contract, or delivering new vessels.
The delay uncovered by the UK Defence Journal has also drawn criticism from trade unions representing workers in the Scottish shipbuilding sector. GMB Scotland, the largest union at the publicly owned Ferguson Marine shipyard in Port Glasgow, described the lack of progress on the Marine Vessel Replacement Project as “frustrating and unjustified”, warning that continued uncertainty risks undermining skills and morale at the yard.
Louise Gilmour, GMB Scotland secretary, told us that repeated caution around procurement risk did not justify inaction. “Every month that passes costs the yard valuable skills while draining morale,” she said, adding that legal risk should be managed rather than used to justify what she described as a “paralysis of action”. She also warned that the absence of clear timelines was fuelling concern that decisions could be delayed until after the Holyrood election.
What are the proposed replacement vessels?
The Scottish Government has published concept designs for two new vessels intended to replace the Marine Research Vessel Scotia and the Marine Protection Vessel Minna as they reach the end of their service lives. The designs are described as preparatory and form the basis for any future procurement rather than confirmed specifications.
The proposed research vessel, intended to replace Scotia, would operate year-round in the Scottish sector of the UK Exclusive Economic Zone and adjacent waters. It is designed to support fisheries research, acoustic surveys and oceanographic missions. The concept vessel is around 85 metres in length with an endurance of up to 28 days and accommodation for up to 40 crew and scientists combined. The design features a diesel-electric hybrid propulsion system with dual-fuel readiness, battery support for low-emission operations, and dynamic positioning for station-keeping during scientific work. Facilities include wet and dry laboratories, acoustic spaces, a science hangar and deck equipment for trawling and sampling operations.
The proposed compliance vessel, intended to replace Minna, would support marine and fisheries monitoring and inspection operations across Scottish waters. The concept design is similarly around 85 metres long, with a higher maximum speed and a crew of around 24. It would be equipped to deploy multiple boarding craft, including rigid inflatable boats and a daughter craft, with launch and recovery systems designed for operation in challenging sea states. The propulsion concept includes a hybrid arrangement with dual-fuel readiness and battery support to reduce emissions.
Both vessel concepts are designed to meet UK Maritime and Coastguard Agency requirements.
If they are hoping for them to be built in their ‘own’ yard then ‘in the coming years’ would appear tobe an honest deadline!
Both vessels originally built at Ferguson’s so, if the SNP want them built at Ferguson’s, no chance of an order soon.
If Labour get in in May, a Vanguard (Research) and T31 (Fishery Protection), both built for but not with, might be nice. No chance of that then.
Doesn’t matter who wins, theres no money to pay for it
A T31 for Fishery Protection? That’s beyond overkill.
Just leave the armament off of it bar the 57mm. The hull itself is cheap as chips and has economy of scale. The Radar will be overpowered but that is hardly the end of the world. The boat bays will still come in useful and the sonar is a boon
Umm T31 doesn’t have a sonar last time In looked ?
Roll these into the UK RN order for Kongsberg Vanguards
Definitely worth closing a couple of schools to get these built in a yard at Port Glasgow to protect jobs when other yards in Glasgow with ample work are experiencing staff shortages.
Perhaps Ferguson can become a magic ship yard able to fulfill the needs of what ever political gimmick comes along, one day its Ferries the next days it’s tug boats and the day after fisheries vessels.
Ferguson can have some sort of massive design office and global sales team that can design a full range of products in each of these diverse categories and then build just one of them at ten times the market price because some politician, union leader or internet commentator thought it was a great idea.
Funny but if you run out of Malt in future leave off the Absinthe. 🤢
Not a priority, and get it off the shelf. Or give them two river classes after 2028 if they get retired.
Wonder what state the River 1’s will be in by that point?
Building five batch three river class opvs three for replacement of batch one opvs plus two for Scottish government would make sense. Fishery protection don’t need big guns but transferring old 20 mm from retired mine hunters or batch one vessels could be done, probably at little cost. No need for high tech systems just enough to wake up the crew of a fishing boat not answering the radio.
If only there was some political organisation above the Scottish, Welsh, and Northern Irish governments to order maritime research and protection vessels rather than each doing their own thing…
Too close to empire for some people.
…daft people
I think the way this whole issue is being framed — both by parts of the Scottish Government and in the public comments — completely misses the broader strategic context of shipbuilding. There is this persistent UK idea that state-owned vessels exist in a “global competitive market” and must be procured like desk furniture, where the cheapest compliant bid wins and domestic industrial capability is irrelevant. No serious maritime nation behaves like that. France, Italy, Norway, Korea, Japan and of course the United States all ensure that government fleet tonnage is built domestically. They don’t do this out of charity or nationalism; they do it because the maritime industrial base is a sovereign capability. Without commercial and government work between naval orders, the skills, supply chains, yard capacity and steel capability atrophy. When politicians here say these are “merchant-class” vessels and therefore outside any kind of national security exemption, that’s a classification trick. Norway’s entire offshore and coastguard fleet is technically “civilian” but is universally recognised as strategic because it underpins maritime resilience and their ability to act at sea. The distinction being made in Scotland between merchant and defence platforms is not a norm internationally; it is a UK political invention.
The argument that support would breach the Subsidy Control Act also needs scrutiny. The Act does not prohibit subsidies to strategic sectors, to regional industrial support, to innovation, to resilience capabilities, or to counter foreign subsidies. Section 45 is always cited, but Section 47 provides explicit national and public security carve-outs. Furthermore, you cannot talk about distortion of competition in a vacuum when foreign yards benefit from massive state support. China, South Korea and Japan don’t just subsidise shipyards; they subsidise steel, loans, credit guarantees, export finance, R&D, tax treatments and sometimes currency exposure. The idea that the UK and Scotland must run procurement as if it’s a pure free market while the world runs mercantilism plus industrial strategy is self-defeating. When foreign yards come in cheaper on paper, people get excited and say “the taxpayer wins,” but nobody accounts for tax clawback, wages, supply chain multipliers, sovereign resilience, skills retention, or the round-trip economic effects of spending public money locally. Treasury accounting deliberately ignores all of this and pretends the narrow tender price is the whole economic picture.
Another common refrain in these comment sections is that the UK “can’t build ships anymore” and that foreign is simply better. Yet we are currently building the Type 26 frigates on the Clyde, the Type 31s, the Sir David Attenborough research vessel, offshore support ships and other specialist craft. The hard end of shipbuilding is precisely the part the UK still does. What we lack is confidence and continuity of work, not competence. Work starvation is a policy choice, not an inevitability. Domestic capacity has been undermined for decades by officials who treat shipbuilding as a commodity sector rather than a sovereign industrial capability. The result is predictable: you hollow out the pipeline, the workforce ages, apprenticeships disappear, supply chains collapse, and then the same people point to the damage they caused as justification for further offshoring.
People also say “value for money” as if ships are like consumer items where we just buy the cheapest one. But even the people who use that phrase rarely define value. Does value include strategic resilience? Domestic tax revenue? Industrial yield? Currency flows? Technology spillover? Export signalling? Skills? If value is purely lowest bid, then the UK should never build anything at all, including defence programmes. Anyone who understands industrial strategy, from Japan to Norway to the US, knows that the true cost of foreign procurement shows up later in hollowed-out capacity, loss of sovereign options, and increased dependency. You only discover how expensive it is when you no longer control the capability.
The argument that aid or subsidies are illegal is also wrong. The EU always had state aid frameworks for shipbuilding, research vessels, offshore and maritime innovation. Post-Brexit the UK actually has more subsidy flexibility, not less. The problem is cultural and political: there are people in the Treasury and in parts of Holyrood who still think 1990s WTO textbook free-market procurement is normal, when the rest of the world has moved on to strategic industrial policy.
The negative commentary about British shipbuilding says more about British psychology than British capability. Other countries treat their industries as assets worth developing; we treat ours as annoyances to be justified. There is enormous UK potential in shipbuilding, offshore energy vessels, auxiliary fleets and maritime engineering more broadly. We have world-class designers, naval architects and yards with historic and modern capacity. What we lack is a government willing to think like a maritime nation instead of a management consultancy obsessed with tender spreadsheets.
Foreign yards win because their governments treat them as strategic tools. The UK and Scotland keep pretending it’s a neutral market and then seem surprised when domestic capability declines. If the UK and Scottish Governments want future autonomy, resilience and industrial capability, they should treat shipbuilding the way serious maritime nations do: as sovereign infrastructure.