Rosyth shipyard expected to win £1bn Danish navy contract
The shipyard at Rosyth in Fife is expected to win a contract to build four frigates for the Danish navy, worth more than £1billion. The yard, run by British-based defence giant Babcock, is also one of the final two bidders for a Swedish navy contract for up to seven of the same Type 31 ships. Competition for the Swedish contract is with a French shipbuilding firm, which has the vigorous backing of the French government. The contracts have been in discussion for more than a year and decisions are expected within the next six months.
The boom in exports, following a contract to build five Type 31 ships for Britain’s Royal Navy, marks a rapid turnaround for Scottish shipbuilding.
It comes after BAE Systems, which runs military shipyards on the Clyde at Scotstoun and Govan, last week secured a contract to build Type 26 frigates for the Royal Norwegian Navy.
The smaller, less-sophisticated and much less expensive Type 31 is a “general purpose” fighting ship – also known to the Babcock team selling the design around the world as Arrowhead 140.
At 455ft (139m) in length and at 5,700 tonnes, it is based on a design already in use with the Danish navy.
Each Royal Navy ship is being built at a cost of £250m at the price set in 2019.
That has meant a loss for Babcock on the first two ships, but it says it is now bringing costs on the third ship into line with that budget.
The first of the Royal Navy’s Type 31 ships, to be named HMS Venturer, has already been floated in the Firth of Forth and is in dry dock being fitted out.
Two more are in construction, with all five due to be ready by 2030.
Navies in the Nato alliance are preparing for more joint operations to counter Russian threats in the North Atlantic, North Sea and the Baltic.
Babcock is selling the Type 31 as a versatile ship to work across different fleets. It is designed to take different weapons systems of a navy’s choosing and to be built on a production line faster and more efficiently than past ships.
Babcock’s director of the Type 31 programme, former Second Sea Lord in the Royal Navy, Admiral Sir Nick Hine, said the priorities for buying ships has long been “performance, cost and timing” and that has now been reversed.
“It’s the ship that navies need,” he said. “It’s affordable and adaptable and we can deliver it in ten years. That’s never been done before. The future for Rosyth looks really good.”
Sir Nick has set his team the target of 31 Type 31 ships being built by 2031.
That becomes possible by licensing the design to other shipyards.
The Babcock design has been sold to the governments of Indonesia and Poland for construction in those countries’ yards.
A team from Rosyth is currently working in Poland, which is being seen as a valuable experience in seeing how another shipyard works.
Babcock already has a vast covered hall at the Fife dockyard in which two frigates can be built side-by-side without interruptions due to weather. It has plans to build another hall of the same scale if additional orders are won.
Babcock says that the current Rosyth workforce of 2,500 could rise to 4,000 if it is successful in winning the Danish and Swedish bids, along with its other work in maintenance of the Royal Navy’s aircraft carriers.
HMS Queen Elizabeth is spending six months at Rosyth, six years after entering service.
The yard services the Royal Navy’s research ships; British Antarctic Survey vessel HMS Sir David Attenborough; and the ships Serco operates between Aberdeen and the northern isles.