Stefan Bernstein explains how the EU/Greenland critical raw materials partnership benefits GreenRoc. Watch the full video here.
I have just seen this article https://en.mercopress.com/2024/03/12/argentine-foreign-ministry-summons-british-ambassador-over-south-atlantic-moves while most of the article was complaining about the visit by the Foriegn Secretary it did include this at the end. 'Hayes was also briefed on Argentina's disapproval of the recent contract with Harland & Wolff for the construction of a new port terminal at the Falkland Islands that will be a strong competitor to the one in Ushuaia and a very attractive gateway to Antarctica.'
Chrisatrdg ref 09.52 post having read the eligibility criteria for an Export Development Guarantee I am going to partially disagree with you. The loan can only be used to help prepare or expand its export ability. I can see nothing in the conditions that would allow it to be used purely for domestic contracts tha t would not help HARL export goods. Granted it is perhaps a semantic difference as goods that are designed for the domestic market can be sold on the export market. So HARL would probably only get in trouble if they used the loan for things that was never going to be exported.
Came across this on LinkedIn it was reposted by David Honeyman and is from Thomas Rooney. The text of the post is
Thomas Rooney 3rd+ Senior Business Development Manager (Defence & Government) at Harland & Wolff
9h •
'Well, Oceanology International 2024 exceeded expectations today. Due to other commitments I only had one day at this great event so had to plan ahead. Spoke to nearly everyone I intended to, caught up with old friends, made a few new ones and had a bunch of really useful accidental conversations. Thanks to my old colleagues at Covelya Group and Sonardyne International Ltd for the beers this afternoon, good to see you all again. Now the work starts… plenty to follow up on, conversations to revisit and relationships to be fostered to further support our ambitions in Harland & Wolff
#oi24'
Kaeran ref 16.06 post I think this has been posted before but there are some new comments I believe. In particular the one from Franceco Lucchese. If the Exante he works at is this one https://exante.eu/ then that is a very interesting comment indeed.
I wonder if this omment is based on something specific or just speculation
Glen Gardner (He/Him) out of network 3rd+ Cruise Ports, Destinations, & Shorex Consultant at GLEN GARDNER
2h
Excellent news. You’ll be building cruise ships next 🇬🇧👍🛳️
LSE03 ref 13.11 post I am not sure if there are any other businesses in the area that she could be going to. However, it may not be a barge as Arnish does have its own workload so it is possible that it is for another as yet unknown client.
LSE03 ref 11.37 post I wonder and this is pure speculation if this ries in with the UKEF funding. If the UK wants to create a cen tre of excellence in cruise refits and repair then underwriting a £200m loan to aim for a 10% share of a £2.6bn market makes sense.
Si_Derman ref 11.15 post the full text is
Good news for Belfast as the first cruise ship of the year docks in our Belfast dry dock in the heart of the city. The vessel will be in dock for a few weeks as the Harland and Wolff team of specialist engineers get her ready for her new route.
The first phase of this process involves opening up work areas to identify the full extent of the work packages when a vessel has been out of service for an extended period. Exciting times ahead for our Cruise sector as several more dockings are planned for this year
Bridgedogg1 ref 10.38 post That is a good qestion the answer is a guarded yes. The answer givin to the parliamentary question from Kevan Jones see SI_Derman's 08.05 post this morning. The test is whether the expenditure help the company bring in export orders in this case the answer is yes because unless he debt is paid off they would not be able to secure the loan.
Consuela ref your 08.15 post not surprisingly you have adopted the negative spin being put on this by Kevan Jones. This funding is specifically for export related expenditure. (See the link in my 08.31). The positives form this funding in relation to balance of payments. new export orders and jobs subject to finding out exactly what the funding is for would seem to justify the funding. I note that this funding is not that dissimilar from other funding provided by HMG where it will secure british jobs.
I assume that you have nothing to say on my stated facts in my original post or the educated guesses in the same post.
Si_Derman ref 08.05 post please see the information on this link https://www.gov.uk/guidance/export-development-guarantee I meant bid on tenders that relate to exports.
Can we separate fact from fiction on this. I do not mind if anyon wants to challenge me on any of these facts with cclear reasoning.
1. The current size of the guarantee being offered by UKEF to HARL is 100% and this is a first. (See my post yesterday under Financing which provided the parliamentary question and answer on this.)
2. The size of the funding is £200m.
3. The interest on the current debt is circa 13%.
4. The interest on the new debt facility is expected to be around 7-8%.
5. Based on the current exchange rate after paying off the RiverFort loan HARL will be left with between £100m - £115m.
6. The new financing is restricted to being used to help HARL win export orders and bid on tenders.
Those are the facts from them we can make some educated guesses.
!. In order to get Ministerial approval the Minister would have needed to be satisfied that the mney would create jobs and exports.
2. To do 1 above some indication of what the loan would be used for would have been given.
3. It is not for FSS or any of the existing work as they are not export related (FSS) or the client would have been entitled to apply for Creddit finance under a different scheme.
4. There is a large contract being worked on n the background that would require significant expenditure,
The full text of the parliamentary question and answer is as follows the question was from the Honourable Member for North Durham.
To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, for what reason UK Export Finance would provide a 100% guarantee on lending to company under the Export Development Guarantee.
Answer
Greg Hands
Conservative
Chelsea and Fulham
Commons
Answered on
19 February 2024
UK Export Finance (UKEF) has not previously 100% guaranteed any Export Development Guarantee (EDG) facilities.
In principle, consideration can be given to guarantee percentages above 80% where this is needed to ensure the success of the transaction, subject to ensuring that the guaranteed loan meets UKEF’s requirements including compliance with applicable subsidy control rules.
Broomtree ref 12.00 post I see your point and I would agree that it does seem to imply that there was a further advance. I do note that the functional currency for HARL and the currency of the loan are not the same and the change in the amount of the loan may be to reflect a change in the exchange rate between the two. If there had been a further loan I would have expected it to say to secure further advances.
Bridgedogg1 ref 07.56 post the financing will be at SONIA + I believe that the plus part is what advice was being sought on. The current SONIA rate is at 5.19 which is the rate it has been on everytime I have checked.
Scaffman ref 15.00 post thanks for this an interesting read. HARL has the advantage over both BAB and BAe that it has ac tually built a floating berth for the RNLI in London so it has relevant recent experience in building a floating deck.