WORKERS at Harland & Wolff's iconic Belfast shipyard have successfully completed fabrication of the first hull on two separate contracts to built 25 barges to be used to transport waste on the London's River Thames.
Shipyard owner H&W Group Holdings (formerly InfraStrata plc) was awarded the contracts last year by Cory Group and its subsidiary Riverside Energy Park, together worth more than £18 million.
Cory has just approved the hull for the first barge in Belfast, and the vessel will now pass into the painting hall prior to its delivery in the coming months.
The second barge will soon be completed, while work on the next two barges is also well advanced.
Fabrication is now being conducted simultaneously on all barges throughout the production hall, with numerous work stations set up and the project team tracking progress on a daily basis with the newly implemented ERP (enterprise resource planning) technology.
The work being undertaken on these barges has supported the facility in ramping up the workforce numbers and advancing vital shipyard skills which will be required for the recently awarded £1.6 billion Fleet Solid Support warship programme.
As part of that contract, H&W will be responsible for delivering work worth up to £800 million through the life of the programme, which will last seven years. It will commence this year, bringing long term employment and opportunities in Belfast until 2031.
John Wood, group chief executive at Harland & Wolff, said: "It's fantastic to walk round the fabrication halls in Belfast and see them being a hive of activity, with our apprentices putting into practice the skills they have learned from our experienced workforce.
"It has been fascinating to watch the adoption of new technology with our twin headed robotic welding line delivering production improvements by a magnitude of four to six times against conventional production and welding methods.
"I'm hugely encouraged with the progress being made and it is the perfect stepping stone towards full scale shipbuilding."
The barges are built to handle 655,000 tonnes of non-recyclable waste from London each year.
Cory Group is one of the UK's leading waste management and recycling companies and operates one of the country's biggest energy-from-waste facilities, with a unique river-based infrastructure on the Thames for delivering waste.
