The build of new supply ships will largely be at Harland & Wolff’s facilities in Belfast and Appledore and Navantia facilities in Spain, however many aren’t aware that a Scottish yard on the Isle of Lewis will build components for the new ships.
According to the firm:
“The Ministry of Defence has selected a preferred bidder to build support ships for the Royal Navy, with a contract that will create 1,200 UK shipyard jobs, hundreds of graduate and apprentice opportunities, and an expected 800 further jobs across the UK supply chain.
British-led Team Resolute, comprising BMT, Harland & Wolff and Navantia UK, has been appointed as the preferred bidder to deliver three crucial support ships to the Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA). Team Resolute will be awarded a £1.6 billion contract (before inflation) to manufacture the vessels providing munitions, stores and provisions to the Royal Navy’s aircraft carriers, destroyers and frigates deployed at sea, subject to HM Treasury and Ministerial approval.
Pledging to invest £77 million in shipyard infrastructure to support the British shipbuilding sector, the investment will create one of the most advanced yards in the UK, significant for future export and domestic shipbuilding and offshore opportunities.
The entire final assembly for all three ships will be completed at Harland & Wolff’s shipyard in Belfast, with the three 216m long vessels – each the length of two Premier League football pitches – built to Bath-based BMT’s entirely British design.
The majority of the blocks and modules for the ships will be constructed at Harland & Wolff’s facilities in Belfast and Appledore, with components to be manufactured in their other delivery centres in Methil and Arnish. This programme, which will also support a significant British-based supply chain, will be undertaken in collaboration with internationally renowned shipbuilder, Navantia. Build work will also take place at Navantia’s shipyard in Cadiz in Spain, in a collaboration that allows for key skills and technology transfer from a world-leading auxiliary shipbuilder.”
According to H&W:
“Arnish Point is a 38 hectare development site located on the North West coast of Scotland, on the Isle of Lewis. Contained within a secured 21,000m² area with purpose built fabrication and assembly halls including fully equipped client, project and administration office facilities. With its deep water quay, it offers unrestricted access to Atlantic and North Channel, Arnish has proved itself as a successful facility for shipment of materials and completed fabricated components.”
Is this announcement along with confirmation of the order for a further 5 T26s in Scotland the sugar before the very hard and unpalatable pill to be announced tomorrow ? Glad to see Belfast shipbuilding getting a boost. Finger crossed Tempest and or T31/32 do not get dumped.
T31 has already started production. Unless you meant numbers?
I’d rather see the overseas aid budget pulled rather than a reduction in defence spending. If the defence budget is spent here in Great Britain. The entire nation and economy receives a boost. Orders and increased manpower mean jobs and tax revenue. (Using spanish facilities is counterproductive.) Overseas aid to anyone other than Nepal, Fiji and a couple of others, is a complete travesty.
We should apply as much nationalist pressure on this government as possible. As I for one, have no idea where the current PM’s allegiances lie.
George, it’s ot counterproductive to use Spanish facilities if we need their hp to build the ships in the first place- which we do fella. Without their help they don’t get built, not enough skilled people in the right areas it would appear.
Yes, I get that. After centuries of being completely self reliant and major exporter, when it came to munitions and armaments. We are now dependant on others for many things. Make no mistake fella, it’s by design.
That’s what happens when the military community permit governments to shirk their primary duty, defence. It should not be this way. The good news is, the decline and loss of capabilities can be remedied. If we plan outside of the 5 year election cycle and put the nations needs first. Sounds like a no brainer.
The Spanish input will recreate the shipyard at Appledore and Belfast,where skills have been lost
This creates choice and competition instead of bae and babcock getting everything. Both of which are based in Scotland
Governments putting out a £20m tender for a robot sub capable of manipulating objects at a depth of 6,000m to go on the underwater surveillance ships.
Thanks for these news. Is there anywhere I can read about it?
https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2022/11/16/uk-military-ups-investments-in-undersea-surveillance/
It’s been awarded to a UK company
Excellent. That will be to repair damaged sub sea lines or remove attached delayed fuse explosives or bugging devices that have attached themselves to internet cables.
Is the £77 million infrastructure investment by the government or BMT group?
Corporate side. I believe it is a pledge of Team Resolute.
Thanks.
BMT is just a design house
That’s great news for the island economy.
In other news I saw America is getting 37billion to give Ukraine. That will be over $100billion this year. I feel the uk and other countries should be stepping it up a bit as well.
The UK has pretty much matched the US on a per GDP basis so far for Ukraine aid.
How much is $100billion in uk gdp money?
So far according to DOD figures the US has committed $18.2 billion and the UK £2.3 billion pounds in security aid which is a roughly even split as a % of GDP. https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/3189571/725-million-in-additional-security-assistance-for-ukraine/ https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2022/09/20/uk-leader-vows-to-keep-military-aid-flowing-to-ukraine/ The US has pledged $40 billion so far and spent around three quarters of that but it’ not all security assistance and the UK has sent more as well if you include refugees and civilian aid. Biden is asking for $37 billion more now because he has no chance of getting the authorisation through a republican house. He does not have a great chance getting it… Read more »
Yeah. Different way of measuring support etc. The uk has done a lot but more will always be welcome from all countries.
The training in the uk seems to be going well. I watched a forces news video yesterday about it
Divide US GDP by 7 to get UK GDP.
Anywhere between 5.5 and 8 is appropriate. The only reason it’s closer to the bigger number is a weaker pound; most financiers and economists think it will recover to 1.4 if they are bullish in the long term and think it will fall below parity if they are bearish. I fall into the former category. Also, 2022 is an unconventional year, and in past years it was a smaller disparity in GDP per capita. By the way, the British figures include only military aid while the higher American figures such as 100 billion are starting to include financial aid and… Read more »
True but US GDP is also massively over blown. Stroll around any neighbour hood in America then come back and tell me how it has a higher per capita GDP than Switzerland.
You can’t have that high a per capita GDP and score so badly on HDI index.
Like Ireland and Singapore it’s GDP is massively distorted due to business investment activities.
The issue with “stroll around any neighbourhood in the US” is that you’re looking at a particular quirk of American development patterns. European development patterns focus on dense urban cores with, more or less, walkable dense neighbourhood, and then nucleated suburban towns, that are fully fledged “places,” with only the occasional suburban single use zoned housing development. Infrastructure varies from borderline car dependent to actively car hostile (go to any old town center and try to get around in a car, you’ll find it much easier to use transit, bike or walk). American development patterns are extremely different. Single use… Read more »
Uk is doing its bit. The Ukranians are happy with UKs contribution. Less happy with Germany, Belgium, Holland, Italy and France’s contributions which are all significantly less meaningful and practical towards Ukraine’s war effort.
You go first. Take a 75% loan on your house and post a cheque to the Ukraine war chest. Put your money where your mouth is.
I sent them £2000 this year already plus I did a lot of fund raising and help for refugees. Only wish I could do more.
Nice work Jim. I keep purchasing small arms/equipment on the Bank of Ukraine website.
👍
I have donated spare money when I’ve had it available to a number of fundraising efforts for Ukraine. It’s only £20-50 here and there but every bit helps.
The uk government can make much more money available for any cause than a private fundraising effort. The more help Ukraine gets the faster this conflict may end and that will save money longer term.
Next time before you open your mouth and let your belly rumble out nonsense try engaging your brain.
I donated a medical pack, a camo 120L rucksack and a £ 10\20 here and there😉
Great stuff. I’m looking for what to try for this month. I go for the smaller organisers instead of big ones like Red Cross, Amnesty international etc. Need to have a look around before pay day. 👍🏻
Oh no, cue the crazy’s now and all the talk of Nicola Sturgeon and blah blah blah Not that I’m defending the SNP or sturgeon as I have no time for either but the Scottish government saved both those yards in Methil and Arnish, before this announcement it was deemed to be a failure however with this announcement seems not. Might be good if other UK administrations put effort in to rescuing manufacturing sites in the same way. Scottish governments total rescue funding was £40 million. Not sure that’s value for money and it’s a fairly big sum for a… Read more »
‘Oh no, cue the crazy’s now and all the talk of Nicola Sturgeon and blah blah blah’
🙄🙄??
State help does have its places and uses. Working out when and how much is the tricky bit.
Hopefully the uk government realises the value of sometime soon.
Yes, unfortunately the SNP lean a bit too much in the other direction. Ferguson has been a real disaster.
Ferguson’s has issues , no question, but on the subject of SNP bailouts, Prestwick hasn’t been on MSM recently, why is that? Possibly because it turned a profit last year and an even bigger profit this year! Can’t possibly have an SNP good news story going about, can we?
Umh? Cammell Laird. £200 million for Sir David Attenborough in 2014; £262 million for work on the Tide class in 2018; £357 million for nine RFA ship maintenance contracts….
I think he wants Cammel Laird to have its share of building vessels. I also would like Laird to regain some sort of building capacity. But, I imagine they will be used for just maintenance. Additionally, I think they have done two type 45s and won the contract for Caledonian Ferries. Oh, the cruise ship Borealis was in dock 5 from October to early November. There could be a chance that a cold war mine sweeper might be restored at CL by having apprentices work on it. The minesweeper, HMS Bronington, is currently partly submerged in a Wirral dock. A… Read more »
Yes, you may well be right. Tragically though as we all know shipbuilding has been in decline since the 70’s, a combination of governments, managers and unions killing it off.
Shipbuildings been in decline since the end of the Second World War when the last audacious class and four Malta class carriers were cancelled.
I’m not criticising Cammell Laird but it’s not really building ships just doing repairs.
Didn’t think you were mate, just thought I’d give you the info.
👍
The RN could do with a modern Ice Patrol Ship so a second Sir D would be welcome, then the Helo capability could be returned to the area too. Give the yard a boost too.
One of my “pet projects” is a couple of Hospital/Disaster Relief Ships paid for out of the overseas aid budget. Both built for war service if needs be.
Well there’s still a campaign running to try and save the two covered dry docks at Pallion in Sunderland. But it’s chances of success seem minuscule 😕
https://www.pallionshipyard.uk/
Be good to save it lots of opportunities to build stuff in there especially for offshore work.
I wonder if we should be using some of the smaller yards to diversify a bit and build fast attack craft and inshore patrol vessels or better still USVs for enduring patrols covering our offshore infrastructure. Thereby freeing up RN manned assets for warfighting and NATO commitments.
Agreed. We’ve moved a bit in that direction with RN losing Fisheries protection.
I didn’t know about this. Thanks for bringing it up.
If the UK government didn’t keep supplying Scottish yards with naval contracts, they would have collapsed a long time ago.
I guess they don’t get as much credit when they haven’t waited like the SNP did until things reach a crisis point and the yards need to be rescued from bankruptcy by nationalising them.
And English shipbuilding was sacrificed following the referendum so that most of it could be concentrated in Scotland. Unfortunately there was no way of avoiding English shipbuilding largely going to the wall because there are only so many ships the UK can afford to build.
That’s nonsense.any evidence?
BAE took the decision to focus on the Clyde well before any Scottish referendum. There was no surface ship building yards left in England when Cameron made his frigate pledge.
Last warship made in England launched 2011, Cameron pledge 2014
Awww you ruined the illusion that it’s a Scottish conspiracy to destroy England’s shipbuilding capacity.
The uk as a whole has some good ship yards and hopefully we are at a level where the current yards can be sustained and still have a bit of competition.
I don’t know about Arnish, but Methil was bust, closed and unable to find any work under Sturgeon ownership. Everyone had been laid off. H&W bought it from liquidators and within a couple of months had a £21m contract building components for offshore wind – the very same offshore wind that was commissioned by Sturgeon and they couldn’t get the work for their own yard. H&W taking on apprentices and providing work, even winning export contracts in Methil.
The announcement talks about two Scottish fabrication plants, not just Arnish on Lewis. Methil in Fife seems to be even more interesting than Arnish. It had a workforce of fewer than 30 when it was bought by H&W last year and now employs over 300 having gained substantial contracts. However, there have been issues with the delivery of some off-shore wind-turbine jackets (a metal construction on which the tubine sits), a 12 month £26.5m order. Last month H&W admitted they had bitten off more than they could chew and had to reduce the order size by 50%. The group announced… Read more »
This is what I and NaB bang on about all the time.
The shortage of skilled fabricators, foremen, managers and QA bods.
It’s been an ongoing issue and was what scuppered BiFab before that owned the yards. It’s worth noting that when people want ship building brought back in the UK that the UK’s industrial base is already operating at close to capacity. With just 3% employment if your going to start doing something in a big way like building ships then your going to have to stop doing something else like building cars or aircraft or making movies. The efforts taking place in the North Sea at the moment to build offshore wind farms are Herculean. I remember reading articles in… Read more »
I think the capacity issue is partly down to productivity. The uk growth in productivity has been shockingly bad over the last 20 years and has lagged well behind our competitors. Productivity growth is through investment in facilities, people on process which take a long time. Again too many people in charge put this off until they really have to, like BAE on the Clyde with the covered construction hall. If they had done this before T26 then we probably be further along building the ships.
The collapse in UK productivity growth (if there even is one relative to competitors) is primarily down to the reduction in financial services which is by far and away our most productive industry and has been hammered since 2008 much to the fan fair of government and manufacturing fan boys. Every G7 country excluding the US has an apparent productivity problem. After visiting the US in many occasions and working with US companies I can confirm that their productivity is no better or worse than any major European player. Their tech sector and reserve currency status appears to massively inflate… Read more »
There will be an additional ~ $1T in US public infrastructure over next ten yrs. Presumably this will increase overall productivity, at the margin.
…(taxpayer financed) investment in US…
It’s a bit chicken and egg. In part we have lower productivity because we have higher employment, and in a capitalist economy the last few percentage of jobs will be inherently less productive. And of course you are right: in times of high employment it’s productivity that needs to be addressed through innovation, automation, training and above all investment.
Looking pretty bad for defence spending. They are saying to be maintained at 2% of GDP which is actually a cut.
Ben Wallace p, scum bad just like the rest of them, fair enough backing away from 3% but to bring it back down to 2% is a betrayal.
It sounded more like kicking the can down the road, “at least” 2% pending a further review to take account of ukraine tbf
Even at the height of the Cameron cuts it was 2% of GDP. They have taken every opportunity to milk anything that looked like a budget increase. If defence was not about to be cut then they would be doing the same.
It makes sense now why they had all those re announcements on ship contracts in the last few days.
Education and NHS budgets are being increased already. Defence is being cut right back down to pre Johnson times.
Hope you sre wrong but the omens I agree are not looking good. There seems to be a complete disconnect between the willingness to spend on defence and the level of threat. Partly due to our political system, I remember being told years ago by the MP for my constituency that “there are no votes in defence”.
There are votes in Defence, but Corbyn is too recent a memory for the Tories to sweat losing those votes.
I wouldn’t bet on that.
Every time I Get hopeful but we never get there sadly with Defence,even with war in Europe honestly what’s it take 🤔
I honestly can’t think of what it takes for Tory’s to increase a defence budget.
Johnson and Truss promised it but they were bare faced liars that would say anything. I’m certain the increase Bojo announced only kicked in from 2021 and it’s now been reversed.
F**k knows what they are going to cut now. Let’s see how popular Wallace is when he is wielding the axe.
If anyone in the Tory front bench starts talking about punching above our weight I will scream.
So no change for the time being, but they are awaiting the updated defence review, was meant to be out later this year, now they say before next budget which will include all info about spending rates ect ect. Was going to be updated to 3%, wonder if the delay is to further change it to reflex a 2.5% gdb spending
I’m betting it’s more likely to talk about punching above our weigh and maintaining the NATO minimum 2% spending target. But don’t worry we just bought a new remote control submarine to keep you broad band going.
Again why so many re hashed defence announcements in the last three days if cuts are not coming.
Remember they pledged to raise defence spending above inflation and inflation is 11%. I can’t see defence getting anything like 11%.
The 2% or 3% isn’t relevant if GDP halfs or doubles you get more or less money for defence. They key is to increase productivity without increasing population 30% more GDP will translate to 30% increase in tax revenues but because the population is the same key services like NHS education pensions benefits don’t need the same spend as if you raise GDP through adding people. That creates a lot of extra money to spend in the economy. Trouble is Labour or the Tories are incapable of grasping this. Generally because they’re incapable of making trade off to their core… Read more »
The Chancellor told the Commons he and the Prime Minister “both recognise the need to increase defence spending”, adding: “But before we make that commitment it is necessary to revise and update the Integrated Review, written as it was before the Ukraine invasion.
Hopefuly we will get 2.5% defence spending, cant wait for the updated review
Yes, I can’t wait, integrated reviews in defence always give us great new capabilities while retaining all the existing functions and never result in draconian cuts lead by short sighted politicians looking to save a few quid.
However when even the biggest populist PM in UK history who never dreamt of attempting to balance a budget would not commit to 2.5% of GDP I see little chance the current front bench will.
Integrated review just a year after the last one. The last one seems to have gotten most things right except the capabilities of the Orcs which it overestimated.
Frozen as expected (the rumours of a cut was purely to lower expectations so people would be glad when it was left alone). Does say they hope to increase the budget in the Integrated Defence Review.
22/23, 23/24, 24/25
Capital budget 19.5 16.5 16.6
Revenue budget 32.1 31.9 32.0
Ukraine (Treasury funds) unchanged
Military 22/23 £2.3bn
Military 23/24 £2.3bn
And aid (unchanged)
£3.5bn of UK Export finance
£1.3bn in fiscal aid including loan guarantees
£220m in Humanitarian aid
Is that not a massive cut then inflation adjusted?
Indexed for comparability, resource spending rises with inflation but your right that capital spending doesnt.
I assume that the review update is an excuse to kick the can down the road for another year.
If the MOD really have their wits about them, the update will be ready, signed off and published tomorrow, explaining why 2.5% now and why 3% in the long term. But I suppose the Chancellor would just come up with another excuse and be pissed off at the MOD to boot.
Good news. Gearing up expertise and capacity as speedily as possible. If ‘Global Britain’ (a nonsense if one looks at our shared history with the world) is to mean anything other than an empty slogan then a steady flow of work needs to be set in train for decades.
Budget will remain at the same % of GDP but only because GDP is shrinking. Nominally it will stay the same but adjusted for inflation it’s a 10% cut and even bigger cut next year as inflation predicted to be 7% while budget is frozen. Looks to me very much like Ukraine aid is being taken from MOD budget directly and not treasury contingency. Pretty much looks as bad as anything we seen from the Osbourne years and maybe worse. The integrated review is just a lie, it will be more cuts. there is no new money for defence, OBR… Read more »
That is a bit gloomy Jim. The one bright part of our defence situation is it isn’t anywhere close to the problem Russia has. You are correct in identifying Osborne’s slash and burn Budgets. The 2010 Coalition was a disaster all round.
But will Labour increase it nope, they know there’s no votes in it. Labours big push and sell the public is energy not defence. Labour will keep it at 2% blame the tories for the first 4 years there in power to the state of the country(standard op procedure for a politician). They’re going to need to borrow to invest in their energy plan. I said time and time again both parties are as bad as each other, they’re both outdated.
Personally, it seems to me that a major lesson of the Russia/Ukraine war, has been completely ignored here. Moving forward, self-reliance in all manner of areas, especially the production of military assets is crucial.
As good and nice, and as skilled as Navantia may be, Britain would have been better off, re-creating more jobs in the ship building industry, which would be of benefit to the nation as a whole now, as well as into the longer-term future.
I agree with your thesis – and hope our government heeds the lesson spelled out in recent events; but we have run down our ship building drastically so this is a way to get back into the game speedily. Also, a feature well illustrated on this blog is how diversified the supply chain can be for all western countries. I think we have to give that serious thought, but for now we need ships and fast.
Trouble is creating jobs and training people in out of date practices is no way forward and will just result in failure, this is where Navantia really add value for the future of UK shipbuilding. Babcock partnered with OMT(Denmark) who don’t just design ships but also consult on optimising the building ships.
Much the same as BAE is doing in Australia and even the USA. UK ship building has to be rebuilt from the ground up and the only way to do that is with bringing in new ideas for foreign yards. The UK has retained skills but all in BAE and as we have seen BAE works well in a competitive environment but is a disaster in a monopoly.
This from the the CEO of H&W Posted on linkedin below: Thank you for all for messages, this week has been hectic so I apologise for not replying to everyone individually. To say that I am proud of Team Resolute is an understatement! We completed on the Belfast acquisition on the 5th December 2019 ( adding Appledore, Methil and Arnish in a busy eighteen month period) what a three year journey, it has not been plain sailing and we have had the support and encouragement from so many people. Our team have put the hard yards in on FSS with… Read more »