Harland & Wolff awarded 11-barge contract worth £8.5m

Harland & Wolff has been awarded an initial contract worth approximately £8.5m with Cory for the fabrication of eleven barges. The barges will be used by Cory to transport London’s recyclable and non-recyclable waste on the River Thames.

Cory operates one of the largest energy-from-waste facilities in the UK, with a unique river-based infrastructure on the Thames for delivering waste, working directly with eight London boroughs, including Hammersmith and Fulham, Lambeth, Wandsworth, Bexley, Tower Hamlets, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, Barking and Dagenham, and the City of London.

Fabrication of the barges will take place at Harland & Wolff’s Belfast site, with first steel being cut within the summer months. The programme schedule allows for four barges to be built in tandem, with the entire build programme ending around mid-2023. Fully fabricated barges will be sequentially delivered to Cory on the River Thames.

“With this material contract, we shall be opening up our vast undercover fabrication halls in Belfast and making optimal use of our new robotic welding panel line,” says Harland & Wolff group CEO John Wood.

“This contract gives us the opportunity to optimise our production flows in readiness for other fabrication programmes in our pipeline and it demonstrates the variety of fabrication work that our facilities are ideally placed to execute upon.

“I am delighted to have secured this contract with our new client, Cory Group, and look forward to working very closely with them to deliver on their new barge investment programme going forward.”

Harland & Wolff’s Belfast yard is one of Europe’s largest heavy engineering facilities, with deep water access, two of Europe’s largest drydocks, ample quayside and vast fabrication halls. As a result of the acquisition of Harland & Wolff (Appledore) in August 2020, the company has been able to capitalise on opportunities at both ends of the ship-repair and shipbuilding markets where there will be significant demand.

In February 2021, the company acquired the assets of two Scottish-based yards along the east and west coasts. Now known as Harland & Wolff (Methil) and Harland & Wolff (Arnish), these facilities will focus on fabrication work within the renewables, energy and defence sectors.