RE: Next stop 20p13 Feb 2023 19:28
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https://www.ft.com/content/4ac1d68d-f5ee-4654-9745-816b84a8f088
At the start of every shift at the once world-renowned Harland & Wolff shipyard in Belfast where the Titanic was built, a horn that could be heard across the city used to ring out. It sounded again last month — this time to mark a new beginning.
Three years ago, as boss of London-based energy firm InfraStrata, John Wood bought the company out of receivership for £6mn. The chief executive found eight foot-high weeds in the yard and recalls the incredulity of colleagues that Harland & Wolff, founded in 1861, could be brought back from the dead.
But Wood believes a £1.6bn contract to build three support ships for the Royal Navy in partnership with Spain’s state-owned Navantia — whose signing was marked by the sounding of the historic horn — will breathe new life into the yard and, with it, a region that ranks as the most unproductive, and one of the most impoverished, in the UK.
“We’ve been given an opportunity here?.?.?.?This relationship is not just for one programme, this relationship is for the future.” Wood told the Financial Times, in an office with a view of the huge yellow cranes, dubbed Samson and Goliath, that have dominated the Belfast skyline for half a century.
The gantries are a permanent reminder of the former standing of a yard that built more than 1,600 vessels before its demise as it lost out to cheaper rivals in the rest of Europe and Asia. It has not built a ship since 2003.
UK defence secretary Ben Wallace, left, at the shipyard in Belfast with John Wood in January 2023 © Charles McQuillan/FT
Wood is sanguine about the junior role the Aim-listed company, which ditched the InfraStrata name in 2021 and now trades as Harland & Wolff, will play alongside its larger Spanish partner in the Team Resolute consortium.
Navantia will be “supervising and holding our hand and making sure we’re doing things right”, he said. With rising construction and energy costs having the company alongside “really de-risks the programme totally for us”, he added.
The contract is a key part of what Wood called a “major transformation” of the company in December when it disappointed investors by halving its 2022 revenues target to between £65mn and £75mn, blaming supply chain constraints and inflationary pressures. He insisted Harland & Wolff was on track to meet its financial targets despite the warning.
For Ben Wallace, UK defence minister, the contract is a leg-up for a national industry that lost orders in recent decades because it failed to modernise. “It’s a bit
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