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Work Recovering at Harland & Wolff Group's Belfast Shipyard Despite Posting Loss of £25.5m

24th May 2022
The new owner of Belfast’s Harland & Wolff shipyard has said its business is improving after announcing a pre-tax loss of £25.5m for its latest reporting period. Above AFLOAT adds in recent weeks was the double dry-docking of Northern Lighthouse Board's NLV Pharos seen sharing the Belfast Dry-Dock with Stena Horizon, a ropax that serves Stena's Rosslare-Cherbourg route. The new owner of Belfast’s Harland & Wolff shipyard has said its business is improving after announcing a pre-tax loss of £25.5m for its latest reporting period. Above AFLOAT adds in recent weeks was the double dry-docking of Northern Lighthouse Board's NLV Pharos seen sharing the Belfast Dry-Dock with Stena Horizon, a ropax that serves Stena's Rosslare-Cherbourg route. Credit: H&Wplc-twitter

The shipyard owner of Belfast's Harland & Wolff has said its business is improving after announcing a pre-tax loss of £25.5 million for its latest reporting period.

Infrastrata PLC, which bought the company out of administration in late 2019, officially began trading under the Harland and Wolff name last September.

The group, which is also seeking to develop gas storage caverns under Larne Lough at Islandmagee, said it is in year three of a five-year plan to make the shipyard profitable again.

But it said the war in Ukraine and the ongoing energy crisis have hit those plans.

Publishing its accounts for the 17 months ending December 31 2021, Harland and Wolff Group Holdings PLC said revenues grew to £18.5m during the period, up from £1.5m for the year to July 31 2020.

The company has now absorbed pre-tax losses of around £36m in the last two reporting periods, with losses reaching £25.5m in the latest 17 months.

It put the losses down to “significant investment to support future growth of the business”, including the acquisition of three shipyards.

Appledore in Devon was acquired in August 2020, followed by Scottish yards Methil and Arnish in February 2021. All three now bear the Harland and Wolff branding.

The Irish News reports more on the shipyard group. 

As pictured above is the Northern Lighthouse Board's aids to navigation tender, NLV Pharos which Afloat reported last month. 

Published in Shipyards
Jehan Ashmore

About The Author

Jehan Ashmore

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Jehan Ashmore is a marine correspondent, researcher and photographer, specialising in Irish ports, shipping and the ferry sector serving the UK and directly to mainland Europe. Jehan also occasionally writes a column, 'Maritime' Dalkey for the (Dalkey Community Council Newsletter) in addition to contributing to UK marine periodicals. 

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Shipyards

Afloat will be focusing on news and developments of shipyards with newbuilds taking shape on either slipways and building halls.

The common practice of shipbuilding using modular construction, requires several yards make specific block sections that are towed to a single designated yard and joined together to complete the ship before been launched or floated out.

In addition, outfitting quays is where internal work on electrical and passenger facilities is installed (or upgraded if the ship is already in service). This work may involve newbuilds towed to another specialist yard, before the newbuild is completed as a new ship or of the same class, designed from the shipyard 'in-house' or from a naval architect consultancy. Shipyards also carry out repair and maintenance, overhaul, refit, survey, and conversion, for example, the addition or removal of cabins within a superstructure. All this requires ships to enter graving /dry-docks or floating drydocks, to enable access to the entire vessel out of the water.

Asides from shipbuilding, marine engineering projects such as offshore installations take place and others have diversified in the construction of offshore renewable projects, from wind-turbines and related tower structures. When ships are decommissioned and need to be disposed of, some yards have recycling facilities to segregate materials, though other vessels are run ashore, i.e. 'beached' and broken up there on site. The scrapped metal can be sold and made into other items.