Good and bad shipyard news

Before blogging on some good and bad news regarding Westcountry shipyards I just want to recap on a little history to put the story into context. In 2004 the then owner of Devonport Dockyard, DML, bought the highly regarded facility at Appledore which has always had a good reputation in the shipbuilding industry. Fast forward to July last year and the takeover of the Devonport yard by Babcock Marine who decided to retain Appledore as part of their setup.

Now Babcock also own Rosyth in Scotland and have the contract to build the UK's two next generation aircraft carriers. Here's the good news: the Appledore yard will help build the hull sections of these two ships thus securing the employment of the 160 strong workforce for something like the next five years. This is a great story for North Devon which needs to retain these sorts of highly skilled people.

Not such good news for Devonport meanwhile where there are to be 600 redundancies. On the plus side there were some expectations I understand that the job loss would be greater than this so it could have been worse.

Like so much of industry today shipbuilding is a cut'throat business. Once there were 'jobs for life' but not these days I have to say.

Devonport Dockyard wins Ocean contract

Good news for Devonport Dockyard! They have won a contract worth £30 million to upgrade HMS Ocean, the Royal Navy's largest amphibious warship. Work is due to start next month and last a year.

Our few remaining shipyards seem to have a hand to mouth existence so this is a welcome announcement for the company and its employees.

The wall starts to come down

For decades the population in Plymouth's Devonport have had the misery of a massive wall splitting the community. This, complete with barbed wire on its top, was erected some time after the area was heavily bombed in the second world war and the defence people enclosed the land as part of the dockyard complex. It must feel a little bit like the Berlin Wall before that came down or like the present wall built by the Israelis between it and the Palestinians but, thank god, you don't risk getting shot even if you could surmount it.

Well today with due ceremony a large excavator started demolishing it. The plan is to build about 500 homes on this brownfield site together with shops and offices. I can imagine quite a bit of celebrating in Devonport tonight; for too long this community has suffered from neglect - this should be a turning point for them.