We were delighted to welcome John Wood, CEO at Harland & Wolff (HARL) to take questions on London South East.

As John said to us: "We are 2 and half years in and we've secured our first cruise vessel order, we've got the Queen Victoria in, we've shipbuilding starting in Belfast with the 20 barges which we are building there, we've got our first defence contract down in Appledore, so you know what, it's not too bad a place to be in. The fact we can still win multiple contracts with the economic times we have, we are actually quite buoyant to be fair."

The Harland & Wolff Group operate across 5 deliberately wide markets and have begun winning contracts in all these target markets. These are:

1. Oil & Gas
2. Cruise & Ferries
3. Renewables
4. Commercial/Maritime
5. Defence

Defence contracts take a very long time to win. The Fleet Solid Support contract is worth more than £1.6bn and has been in procurement for more than two years now. "We've got two positions in that contract, one with Navantia called 'Team Resolute' the other with Team UK. It's been all over the media that these are the two preferred bidders and whatever happens we will win a significant amount of work. There are two steps to this announcement, a preferred bidder announcement is due shortly, then the contract award which we expect to be next year. We have 52% of the manufacturing capability in the UK across our four yards and there really isn't enough trained labour in the UK, so using a blended UK/Spanish base gives us an edge over other UK shipyards we believe" said John.