The UK government has launched a new scheme to help buyers purchase UK-built ships, with £500m of credit guarantees.

Through the Shipbuilding Credit Guarantee Scheme (SCGS) the government will act as a guarantor for lenders, unlocking credit for maritime firms. The scheme will help buyers access finance to buy UK-built vessels and upgrade existing ones.

The SCGS is designed to help boost the struggling UK shipbuilding industry and drive growth in areas such as Liverpool, Plymouth, the Solent, Rosyth, Clydebank and Belfast — home to the Harland & Wolff shipyard, where the Titanic was built.

“Shipbuilding is an integral part of the UK’s industrial identity, and through this scheme, we are backing our great maritime businesses to get ahead of the competition,” says the minister for industry and economic security, Nusrat Ghani.

“With cutting-edge vessels designed and built here in the UK, this will be a boost to high-skilled careers and every company involved in the supply chain for shipbuilding, helping us to grow the economy.”

The scheme also forms part of the government’s £4 billion plan to revitalise UK shipbuilding and coastal communities through the National Shipbuilding Strategy Refresh, announced last year.

Ghani is formally launching the scheme today (26 July 2023) at an event onboard a Thames Clippers’ boat – built at Wight Shipyard, one of the UK firms which stand to benefit from the new scheme – in London. The Telegraph reports that Wight Shipyard lost £1.7m in 2021, according to its most recent set of accounts.

The government says the SCGS will guarantee a percentage of the value of loans used to purchase, refit, retrofit or repair vessels, sharing the risk with lenders to encourage offers of finance to UK vessel owners and operators.

“As I set out in the National Shipbuilding Strategy Refresh, this scheme will help build confidence in UK shipyards, allowing them to invest in the people and the technology to drive productivity forward in this vital sector of the UK economy,” says shipbuilding tsar and defence secretary Ben Wallace.

The government estimates that the industry supports 42,600 jobs nationwide and adds £2.4 billion to the economy annually. A strong domestic sector helps to support the wider economy’s export ambitions, with 95 per cent of UK trade moved by sea.

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