Although perhaps now better known for ship repair rather than shipbuilding, Cammell Laird and the wider APCL group is now heavily engaged in building sections for the Dreadnought submarine and Type 26 Frigate programs. Here we look at how this organisation has assumed a vital role in supporting the fleet and become a key enabler in major naval projects.
Cammell Laird in Birkenhead joined forces with A&P Falmouth and A&P Tyne in 2023 to become APCL, the largest commercial ship repairer in the UK. APCL employs over 1,400 people, has 9 operational dry docks, 4 building berths, 3km of wet berths and has supported over 1,000 ships in the past 5 years. A strategy of pursuing both commercial and naval contracts has been successful, a diverse customer base helps ensure a reliable flow of work. Last year, specialist marine painting company Neway Industrial Services, based in the Birkenhead yard also became part of the APCL group.
Royal Fleet Auxiliary ships are maintained through the 10-year in-service support contracts by CL and A&P Falmouth This framework guarantees the yard continuity of work which in turn has supported investment and stability. CL has two cluster contracts – now responsible for the maintenance of the 4 Tide-class tankers, 2 Wave-class tankers, RFA Fort Victoria, RFA Proteus and RFA Stirling Castle. A&P Falmouth looks after the 3 Bay-class landing ships, RFA Argus, the Batch 1 OPVs and HMS Scott.
APCL can also provide support to RFA vessels overseas. In April they managed an assisted maintenance period for RFA Argus at the Larsen & Toubro Kattupalli shipyard in India which involved 150 work items. They also coordinated a self-maintenance period for RFA Lyme Bay, the first time RN/RFA maintenance has been conducted in an Indian shipyard.
The CL yard on Merseyside has a shipbuilding heritage that dates back to the 1800s, having built many major warships and submarines for the RN. The original business folded in 1993 after the completion of HMS Unicorn but was subsequently resurrected as a ship repair yard in 2007. Against the odds, the yard also returned to the shipbuilding business, fabricating flight deck units for the QEC aircraft carriers in 2010. Most new build projects have been small ferries but in 2015 CL won the prestigious contract to build the Antarctic support and research ship, RRS Sir David Attenborough.
The complexity of the SDA proved to be very challenging and CL took a substantial financial loss on the project with the ship eventually being sent to Denmark for defect rectification before it was accepted. Survival of the yard has been in doubt at times, but CL’s finances and order book have improved recently. In 2023-24, turnover increased to £146M, compared with £122M the previous year, while profits almost doubled to £6.8M.
CL workforce has also grown substantially, now numbering around 650. Adjacent to the shipyard is the Engineering College, a not-for-profit organisation, part of a national network that trains apprentices in STEM subjects. Around 100 employers send their apprentices to the college, which has around 45 staff. 200 of the 450 trainees at the college are CL apprentices who undergo a 4-year course learning welding, mechanical or electrical engineering while gradually being introduced to working in the yard. Applications to CL for apprenticeships are hugely over-subscribed as it offers a pathway to gain skills that are in great demand while being paid.
Dreadnought outer hull
The APCL group are responsible for fabricating most of the external sections for Dreadnought-class submarines that are outside the pressure hull and is the largest outsourcing partner to BAE Systems for submarine units. The subcontract includes the manufacture of casing, keel, waist and internal units. Parts for HMS Dreadnought and HMS Valiant (boats 1 and 2) are currently in production at Birkenhead and A&P Tyne.
APCL are in negotiations with BAE Systems and the Submarine Delivery Agency (SDA) for further batch (DP3) of Dreadnought work, potentially a 10-year work stream, which will likely see contracts placed for an additional 122 units to be built at Birkenhead and 22 on Tyneside. There will also be further investment at the Tyne West facility to support this fabrication work.
The top casing sections are being fabricated upside down in the construction halls in Birkenhead and are particularly impressive, indicating the huge size of these submarines. As CL warned the customer, they experienced considerable challenges with manufacturing these units as the design specifies thin steel to save top weight. To avoid distortion, some units have had to be reworked using low-temperature welding techniques, slightly impacting the delivery schedule. CL is also responsible for the preservation and coatings of these steel parts that will be submerged in seawater for many years. The completed sections are carried by barge up the coast to Barrow, where they will be consolidated with the pressure hulls in the Devonshire Dock Hall.
CL are also building a bespoke Buoyancy Assist Module (BAM) for Dreadnought. A BAM comprises large port and starboard floatation tanks, joined with overhead arches. The submarine is positioned between the tanks that are then temporarily attached to the vessel and pumped dry. The Dreadnought BAM is the first of its kind manufactured in the UK and will be used to reduce the submarines’ draft as they leave Barrow for the first time. Even with its own buoyancy tanks filled with air, Dreadnought will have such a deep draft that it would not be able to get over the dock sill system without being raised slightly. The heavy lead ballast is integral to the keel and cannot be added once the boat is in the water.
Type 26 blocks
APCL are also a key supplier to the Type 26 frigate programme. A&P Tyne built 4 stern units totalling 220 tonnes for HMS Belfast (ship 3) which were delivered to Govan last year. CL are currently working on further units for HMS Belfast as well an an 850-tonne lower block propulsion section for ship 4, HMS Birmingham. BAES have asked CL to take on increasingly complex projects that involves consolidating units into blocks and the addition of pipework and cabling into the sections. The lower block for HMS Birmingham will be transported by barge to Govan in the new year and will go into the new Janet Harvey shipbuilding hall to be consolidated into ship 4.
The steel plate used in these vessels comes mainly from Turkey and Spain as the UK no longer has the manufacturing capacity for this grade. (Discussion of this strategic folly is outside the scope of this article.) CL has an off-site plasma-cutting facility that prepares thousands of parts that vary enormously in size. These components are supplied to the yard for welding, each carrying a unique number that identifies where they will go. This work requires high standards and the welds are subject to tight quality control. Small numbers of welders from the Philippines have been employed by the company to address the shortages in this trade. The use of foreign labour is always controversial but the Philippino staff are well-liked and respected for a great work ethic.
With the Dreadnought and Type 26 production in full swing, BAE Systems is now operating at maximum capacity, offering opportunities for APCL and other UK yards, such as Ferguson Glasgow, to take on additional work to support these programmes. Should Norway choose to buy Type 26 frigates built in the UK, this will demand even greater fabrication work and opportunities for the supply chain.
By subcontracting, BAES can alleviate its capacity issues and spread the economic benefits of major naval programmes more widely across the UK, helping to support jobs and the up-skilling of a new generation of shipyard workers. With commercial, RFA and BAES contracts, CL is now in a solid position and is considering investment in new technologies, construction facilities and warehousing.
Any updates on Harland and Wolff?
Duke-R while freelancing at Goldman Sachs downloaded upgrade software for 4.5 inch gun AA mode thereby causing toilet overflow and shortening the reactor cooling hence a fire in the chips fryer
I think we found the bot
We did…The Sparrow
Read it carefully it is actually very funny!
I get last laugh with some AI
At least you have a sense of humor unlike someone here who is artificial and not intelligent
It’s more than one on here…… who have no Humour (English spelling).
I larrrfffed
Last I heard Navantia had made a bid but were asking for the £1.6bn FSS contract to be renegotiated increasing the price by £300m to help them recapitalise the yards and saying they couldn’t guarantee the 1,000 British jobs without it.
I think we need one of the other Majors to make a competitive offer to acquire the yards to keep Navantia honest.
I suspect the others have got their hands full increasing their own workforces for future projects and would rather focus on T26 export, T32, MRSS, T83, SSN-A rather than putting limited energy and resources into the emerging Solids Stores fiasco.
The main issue is manpower. That is a lot of man years of work to ramp up just submarine production! Then add keeping warship build going at a constant drumbeat….then RFA needs….
I’m afraid the solids stores should have been built as the oilers were. Hull somewhere cheap and then final sensitive fit in the UK!
I said at the time that a 100% £200m export guarantee was a bargain. Even a £300m gift to Navatia would be a bargain compared to a BAES or Babcock take over. So the government should pay up and ask for a chunk of Navantia UK in compensation. Except HMT will probably mess this offer up as well and start talking about reopening the competition.
It would never have worked – the finances were always wishful thinking.
“They also co-ordinated a self-maintenance period for RFA Lyme Bay, the first time RN/RFA maintenance has been conducted in an Indian shipyard” –
You mean, apart from 300ish years of the Raj?!
😀👍😂🇬🇧
Obviously you’re joking and true about British ships in India, but the Raj wasn’t 300 or ish years or even close ish 🙂
I think he refers to the British East India Company, the de facto maritime trading arm of the British Raj and government until the 1800’s, which started trading and sailing in 1600. So in total 400 years ish.
‘Raj period’ is specifically from 1858 to 1947
Hey Nipper, How’s it hanging dude ?
The Raj (i.e.Direct control by the British Government) was from 1858 to 1947, so 89 years. The rest of the period of British involvement in India was under the East India Company
The 300 years part is not actually true really. Just sayin like…..
Ships come out worse than they go in
Very true! The article was a nicely-written advert for Cammel Laird that manages to make _almost_ no mention of the ‘quality’ of the work experienced by the ships that are left in their hands…
It’s nice that they’re ever so busy, but perhaps some need of quality over quantity?
This is a sensibly way of building up CL’s capabilities by feeding them larger and larger fab projects in a controlled manner.
Good point.
Author
Overall an excellent article
It is one only very-slightly spoilt by just one very-small comment – the assertion that the only strategic folly by UK PLC was not having the steel fabrication plant located here in the UK….
Because, as the article makes quite-clear (and also as CL themselves fully appreciate) – these types of hull fabrications are known in the structural design trade as “ar*e antics”.
Accordingly, the very much-bigger strategic folly made by UK PLC was – ot course – not having first built a new “properly-sized” yard at Barrow – so that all four new “very large and very heavy” Dreadnought class boats could be built properly indoors. That new yard could have been completed by now
CRITICALLY
It should have allowed our brand-new submarines to float out when completed
Overall, this “rather silly” approach will end up costing us taxpayer far more than doing the job properly in the first place .
A Penny-Wise, but Pound-Foolish, way to design and build our new Submarines….
——————————————
Supportive Bloke
I agree that it is very nice to see Cammell Laird’s capabilities being built up.
I strongly suspect that their key commercial advantage is that this APCL company now has is that it wholly focused on shipbuilding (i.e. unlike its two competitors, both beginning with letter B, both of whiich are now very-large, and very-poorly-focused corporate muddles).
———–
However these few photos here on NL show us that CL still have a very long way to go before they can even become close to being a world-class yard ..
Top five spotted in the first two minutes = without “little me” even trying too hard…
Finally: some advice to Mr C.Laird of the Wirrall:
Both actions to be completed before your insurers, the MOD inspectors and RN (ultimate customer) turn up = which, after the big fire at BAe Barrow, will probably next week
Also; finally book yourself a trip up to Lapland next month – to see where the Swedes, now our favourite NATO partner, build their submarines You will learn a lot…
Regards Peter (Irate Taxpayer)
PS
I very strongly suspect that plenty of future editions of NL will soon have articles headed : “Many new pieces of RN SSBM submarine are now being fabricated on the Wirral”
Saab Kockums build their subs at Karlskrona, like their other yard at Malmo, in southern Sweden
Would it surprise you 95 % of the staff building it are Philippine and are renting accommodation from the management
Great metal workers from those parts….but….not using approved working methods is endemic so I’d be quite concerned about that if it is true.
Is there a source for that Mr Bloggs?
Nothing wrong with them, they are hard working
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-21519917
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cqj0ln81yyjo
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-wales-56610658
Very hard working.
The issues are standards and security.
The NHS, nursing homes, and fishing fleets also use these labourers for better or worse, that says a lot about the country.
Are the Brits too lazy to learn a trade or just want to collect welfare?
No wonder there is not enough manpower for the military
Agreed, steady growth is always easier to manage properly.
It was a bit disappointing to hear that they’d had so much trouble with the RRS Sir David Attenborough- not sure what would have been considered so complex about it? But hopefully they’ll have learned from those and be in the running for more actual ship building in future- Naval or otherwise.
Don’t call it that….. It’s always Boaty Mcboatface….. The public was robbed.
😂
CL did the same sort of hull casing work on the Astutes
“Cammell Laird was contracted to fabricate and assemble casing units 1,2,3 and 5 for boat 4 which cover the top of the pressure hull and the following modules and items for boats five, six and seven.”
and unspecified ‘block units’
“Cammell Laird successfully delivered the block-build units for boats four, five, six and seven of the new Astute Class”
I understand the work is done the the traditional sub sheds
The casings are really rather important for quiet running….
If the casing creaks as it is dynamically loaded [early monocoque Jaguar] by hydrodynamic flow it doesn’t make for silent running…or if you get a sympathetic rattle [window regulator BL style]…you get the point.
All bits of SSN or SSBN are mission critical.
This Picture shows two T45’s….. Portsmouth currently has Two more….. I know that the other two are currently Bobbing about but how low can we go ?
All depends on what stage of being put back tithe’s they are at?
If one is pretty much ready for trials – looks like propulsion basin trails by the wash?
Then that is not such a bad place to be.
It is totally impossible to sustain more than 4/6 actually deployable and deployed for any period of time unless you start ignoring maintenance intervals as you would in time of war.
If you look on Google Earth there 6 T45s visible between CL and Portsmouth.
I don’t know how many are overlapping between the photos, but not a good look!
That said, GE also says that we have three carriers because it’s an old photo of Portsmouth.
Google earth is not a good indicator. Right now there are no T45 in Birkenhead. There are four in Pompey, three of which aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.
I know, I just think it’s funny that GE over predicts our maritime strength.
All of the Portsmouth imagery is from March 2022.
Sailorboy
When I was your age – many decades ago – it used to be called EMCON
As you clearly had not noticed ……………..back in March 2022…………. that very nice Russian-born chappie – Mr V Putin – chose that date to rearrange the line of border posts dividing Ukraine and Mother Russia.
Only Mr Putin clean forgot to ask his geography teacher’s permission first!
The only impact it had here in the UK was that our Foreign Secretary, Liz Truss, was woken up in the middle of the night: to be told the bad news.
Probably best for all of us that she rolled over, and went back to sleep….
Accordingly, ever since then, Google have been “self-censoring” many ariel pictures of many Western / NATO military installations (ie only publishing their old photos) and they have also turned off some other functions
For example, only last week, it was reported in the Daily Torygraph that Google’s map and traffic function had accidentially identified the brand-new location of many Ukrainian mobile missle batteries – less than an hour after they had moved.
So; Google turned that particular function off in that geographical area…
Google Maps ‘reveals location’ of Ukrainian military positions
Friendly advice = using your mobile phone in wartime will kill you!
Peter (Irate Taxpayer)
PS EMCON = Emissions Control
The shot of one of the QEs in Rosyth is from March this year, so not that old.
It is only a 2D mapping however, so not much visible.
Portsmouth gets the full 3D treatment, really nice for getting a feeling for the dockyard buildings.
Russia has its own high resolution satellite cameras. Irate taxpayers have no military resources to target anything other than a spot in the Asda carpark.
Google Earth is no gauge when it comes to current activity though….. I guess you noticed just what other ships were in Pompey a few weeks back when you were touring POW ? There are at least two T45’s and Two T23’s there at the moment, also a River and quite possibly a couple more not in shot…… School Trips are amazing though, I used to love those I had in Plymouth all those years back.
Not much of a view on the way through the dockyard, unfortunately.
Did get:
A peek of where Bristol is now, after she got moved from Whale Island,
A shot of Patrick Blackett, complete with unmanned RIB and suspiciously normal-looking container and
A full drive by of the two T45s under PIP in 10 and 11 docks.
I become a bit of a bore on such occasions, as you can possible imagine.
You do know that photos like this are often ‘stock’ used for illustrative purposes, and can be years old?…
Don’t let them near submarine gearboxes.
There has been no mention of Harland and wolf shipyard in Belfast which could go into foreign ownership due to lack of orders. Why???
It has a multi-billion pound order book. the company management were incompetent taking out £70m of extremely high interest short term US loans at 10% resulting in a debt to them that doubled to £140m in two years, directors embezzling over £25m, and wasting more resources starting up their own ferry business and trying to launch it two weeks before the end of the ferry season.
Because it’s an article about Cammell Laird/APCL?
Also because disentangling that mess is going to be a total nightmare.
I suspect that NAV want a lot of money for the bother of managing the H&W yard.
In the original deal H&W was its own ‘self managing’ entity. A legal new vehicle will have to be created to reverse the Belfast yard into.
The origional deal vehicle will almost certainly have self dissolved on the insolvency of one of the key partners and I’m pretty sure the Solids Contract will have too unless the contract was with the parent NAV only and H&W were simply a subcontractor – I’d hope that was the case.
I think the contract is with Navantia UK – which is a legal entity – and probably the one that would end up owning the H&W yards.
H&W did not have a direct contract with MoD for very good reasons – they would not have met the criteria to prime the job.
Yup…but there is a lot of bother and risk in owning an extra yard that you don’t really want or need commercially.
Even if the contract proceeds then there is the issue of long term workflow and if that workflow doesn’t eventuate then the redundancy and closedown costs of the yard.
I would take an inspired *guess* that this is what the current ‘negotiations’ are about.
I would *guess* the conversation goes along these line ‘we can happily build you the ships for the agreed price in Spain. Followed by ‘if you want us to take on the costs and risk of the Belfast yard then you need to guarantee this sum’.
I would if I was them!
Wouldn’t argue with that.
REF: Serving Paella in H&W’s canteen!
N-a-B and Supportive Bloke
N-a-B is quite right to point out that Navantia UK is a separate legal entity (Note: You beat me to it by less than 40 minutes!).
However THE key issue affecting the possibility – or quite-possibly otherwise – of H&W soon to be taken over by Navantia UK is going to be none of the various subjects which you both mentioned (above).
Navantia’s UK MD, and a few others in their senior team, made their own views very clear to me when we were – very informally – chatting about this topic; coincidentially at about this time last year.
Importantly, that informal chat was back at a time when the corporate H&W PLC was (supposedly) well along its long road to recovery…..so their words were not influenced by what has happened very recently….
——————–
The Spanish very-strongly believe that all of H&W’s current yard working practices are – and I now quote one of their senior team word for word – “Unfortunately, H&W are iving in the very distant past!”.
Navantia believe – and I have to emphasise this next point very very strongly – that H&W is still relying upon having built the Titanic: which, of course, was well over a century ago.
The Spanish now want H&W to move on….
Thus the Spanish senior mangement believe that THE key issue is the one still to be addressed = the need to retrain and upskill all aspects of the very antiquated Belfast Yard (i.e. to soon do what an over-stuffed and very over-paid management consultant would call in their flashly powerpoint presentation “a very very steep learning curve”).
Therefore, even 12 months ago, just to allow H&W to be their key sub-contractor; and thus to then allow them to build several new blocks of the upper parts of the new RFA FSSS ships = the Spanish wanted considerable modernisation of many working practices, throughout all aspects of H&W’s Belfast yard.
Things have moved on over the past year:and are now more complex
Thus, as Supportive Bloke has quite-rightly pointed out above, today there are many very big differences between sub-contracting and potential ownership.
——————
Please do not forget that
and the issue of “what happens next with H&W and FSSS?”
…………….has just been immensely complicated by the simple fact the UK’s only submarine building facility is now, at least for many more months…..KAPUT (or FUBAR as somebody said here last week)
——————
Therefore, in my own view (and as I have said this before here on NL), the introduction of many more Spainish working practices into the Belfast yard of H&W cannot come soon enough
Whether that will ever happen, or not, is now on a toss of a coin.
Overall this new government’s naval shipbuilding strategy is now called
“DON’T PANIC, DON’T PANIC………”
Regards Peter (Irate Taxpayer)
The people in the build chain in Navantia come primarily from Puerto Real, where they had a tech transfer / process improvement agreement with what was DSME. That was for building the Suezmax tankers (the last major ships built in Puerto Real) in the late teens.
That left them with a pretty much state of the art set of design and shipyard processes – I was impressed when we visited the yard.
Belfast in some ways ought to be a blank sheet of paper, in that it hasn’t been engaged in proper shipbuilding for two decades and that there aren’t enough people left to entrench any poor practices. That said, its clear that they’ve basically been executing work at the rush just to get the cash in to the business (even if it then magically disappeared….)
N-a-B
As usual on NL = yours is both a very interesting and also a very perceptive “take” on the overall situation.
I totally agree with you comments about about the quality of the Spanish yards.
I would like to add add one further observation: namely that the Spanish management, at all levels, seems to me to be far more “switched on” than most yards here in the UK
However I am not so sure about your assessment of the overall situation in Belfast. As of today, I am really not sure it can be described as “blank cansvas”.
All I can say is that, as of my chat of 12 months ago, the workforce’s attitudes were clearly “of concern” to Navanati UK
Maybe /hopefully things have moved on since then?
However, overall I do think there is one hell of a good opportunity for “somebody” to take on H&W in Belfast:
Frankly, as of today, what happens next depends on only two things::
Peter (Irate Taxpayer)
Harland & Wolff ( Belfast) Ltd is still running, along with Harland & Wolff Plc, est 1885.
Its the london based company Harland & Wolff Group Holdings Plc thats in administration
The other bits are on life support ATM
ha ha.
Frankly a disaster that successive conservative and labour governments have conspired to ensure we can’t make the steel we need, we can’t weld it together and have lost so much expertise we have to send those things done here abroad for rectification or even just maintenance. These parties have destroyed this country at the behest of the russian owned UK civil service
Nothing is going to be improved by RR’s NI hike and Labour’s 4 day week and other nonsense. After the Conservatives leisurely rule through all those years Labour’s is on course to wreck what is left.
We need as a nation to wake up, not to woke up.
Someone with sense has to take back control who understands modern industry in all its complexity. Someone who can recruit and train a workforce into excellence.
“Nothing is going to be improved by RR’s NI hike” The Chancellor raising national insurance tax .
How else do you think services like RN are going to get extra money except by increasing revenue ?
‘In the October[2024] Budget, the government announced plans to hike defence spending up from the current rate of 2.3% of GDP to 2.5%.”
“Healey just said the country has not spent 2.5% of GDP on defence since 2010, when the last Labour government was in power.
Your claims are not backed by the facts
Almost all of the NI hike was handed to the NHS ca £25Bn.
Quite ridiculous after the Health Secretary stated ‘more money won’t fix the NHS’
As soon as the £25Bn was announced NHS started briefing that it wasn’t enough money! Usual joke.
Whilst NHS resource utilisation is absolutely terrible and the answer is always ‘we need more money/more people/more resources’
Who cares? We have taken back control !!!
That was always nonsense.
You don’t say, 51.98% voted for it.
No it wasnt last payout it was £12.6 bill net
Britain still contributes for these specific EU programs
Horizon Europe – the EU’s research and innovation programme
Euratom Research and Training programme
International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER)
Copernicus – EU satellite system for monitoring the Earth
Yes, I know that.
Your comment is a non sequitur to mine.
So you know they arent now sending ( gross) £350 mill pw to EU then. Why do you deny it.
Spam would kindly inquire something about you, the fount of power is now happening worldwide Shiva will align with powerful transcendence empower and strengthen others….
‘The Ministry of Defence (MoD) is set to receive a £2.9 billion increase in its budget, announced by Chancellor Rachel Reeves in her first budget speech.”2022/23 FY included £ 3 bill just to implement IFRS 16 an accounting standard but it was non cash