Titanic days at Harland & Wolff as lay-offs spell end for shipyard

Belfast shipyard Harland & Wolff will lay off more than two-thirds of its staff by the end of the year, its owners said yesterday.

Once the biggest shipmaker in the world with more than 14,000 staff, the company signalled an end to that business as it issued 90-day protective notice to 265 people from its remaining 386 staff.

The development comes four months after a rescue package designed to save the yard was introduced and it leaves only a skeleton staff at the yard.

The company plans to concentrate on project management activities due its failure to secure big contracts, effectively ending ship-building 140 years after the firm was established by Sir Edward James Harland and GW Wolff.

Best known as the maker of the Titantic, which sank in 1912 on its maiden voyage, the company has long ceased to be force in world shipbuilding and employer of thousands in Belfast. It also owned shipyards in Britain.

The remaining operations are owned by a Norwegian group, Fred Olsen Energy, which said in a stock exchange statement that there were few opportunities to secure big contracts in the offshore and ship completion markets.

After 144 redundancies last March, the latest job losses will follow the completion of a new roll-on roll-off ferry, the Hartland Point, and another, the Anvil Point, which is due for delivery in the new year.

These vessels built for the British Ministry of Defence are considered likely to be the last built by Harland & Wolff as it is thought that the remaining workforce will not maintain the skills required to enable the yard to secure and carry out new major ship construction.

A shop steward, Mr Andrew Kane, said: "It's a very big scale reduction. It clearly destroys the shipyard because it leaves only 25 manual workers and about 90 others."

Mr Kane accused Fred Olsen Energy of bad faith because it had sold 80 acres of land to the Northern Ireland authorities for a science park and business zone but failed to secure most of the jobs at the site.

Said Mr Kane: "Although this has been expected for some time, the workers feel angry and betrayed. The unions and the politicians delivered their side of the bargain.

"This doesn't have to be the end of it, if, in particular, the company would keep its side of the bargain."

But a Harland & Wolff spokesman said the £15 million sterling (€23.89 million) secured through the sale of the Titantic Quarter site would fund a business plan in which the company would concentrate on ship-repair, renewable energy, structural steelwork and technical services.

"The company wouldn't be here if we hadn't recovered the money," he said. It would not have been able to complete the two ferries currently at the yard without the money, he said.

The Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Investment, Sir Reg Empey, said news of the job losses was "extremely disappointing". Much effort had been put into trying to save jobs, he said, particularly since devolution three years ago.

Defending the business plan, he said: "It did offer hope, but there was never any guarantee that it would be successful and adverse market conditions have not helped."

Sir Reg added: "The release of funds from the sale of the land gave the company a fighting chance of survival. The alternative would have been closure of the yard."

While the company said it would review the situation should conditions in the market change, its spokesman said it was "very difficult to see work orders".

The spokesman said Harland & Wolff had already begun its move away from shipbuilding, with steelwork carried out on the recent refurbishment of the Ha'penny Bridge in Dublin.