And there could be a whole new market for similarly challenging ships as the green energy transition fuels demand for vessels with the equipment to install and service offshore wind turbines. In fact, Infrastrata, which also acquired Harland & Wolff last year, is banking on it.
Announcing its ownership of Appledore, Wood said he was forecasting a £6bn pipeline of orders over the next five years, of which renewable energy formed a large chunk. But that can’t happen if British yards don’t have enough work in the meantime to keep them alive.
Industry veteran Sir John Parker delivered his government-commissioned National Shipbuilding Strategy three years ago, calling for a “regular drumbeat of work” to avoid expensive ramping up and down. The review called for naval vessel construction work to be distributed around yards, with each building blocks that could be transported to a main site and bolted together.
So that yards could keep working, he called for budget warships that were also attractive to export customers – the Type 31e being the result.
Beyond the Navy
Avoiding the boom and bust has led to a bitter fight that has pitted the Government against industry and unions over a new class of ships to provide the Navy’s new carriers with supplies such as ammunition and spares. These Fleet Solid Support ships are operated by the Royal Fleet Auxiliary, meaning the Government does not class them as warships that have to be built domestically.
The contract was tendered internationally, causing howls of protest. Yards warned of job losses if the work went overseas with no other major projects in the pipeline.
However, the Government has reversed its decision on the FSS’s classification, and it looks likely they will be constructed mainly in the UK, effectively meaning commercial shipbuilding is propping up naval shipbuilding. Ian Waddell, general secretary of the CSEU shipbuilding union, says: “The FSS is a bridge for the industry to other work. It going abroad would be terminal for most UK yards.”
He says specialised skills in shipbuilding will not only help create the vessels to install and maintain offshore wind turbines, but could even be a big part of the green energy boom.
“It’s not a big step from propellers to advanced aerofoils on turbines or ships’ machinery to generators in turbines. There’s an opportunity to move into adjacent industries.”
Looking to the future
Bringing shipbuilding home could even be an easy win for ministers, according to Fitzalan Howard. “To claim a victory, all the Government has to do is funnel a few orders to UK shipyards and they can say they have doubled shipbuilding in this country,” he says. “It wouldn’t cost that much.”
However, Stott cautions against the idea that the UK will ever again be a shipbuilding superpower. The industry is one of low margins – 70pc of the value is in the supply chain and not the shipyard – meaning that volume is one of the best ways to remain competitive, an option not available to the UK, and one which comes with its own problems because of the feast and famine cycles.
“The superpower statement is pure jingoism,” Stott says, describing the sector as “uniquely difficult”.
Instead, he encourages British shipbuilding to look forward rather than look back to the 1890s when the nation had an incredible 82pc of the global shipbuilding market.
“Our dominance back then has become a millstone,” Stott says. “There’s a distorted, retrospective view with which we persist in cloaking the industry. What we need to do is draw a line under that and work out where we can go from here.”