UK player InfraStrata has acquired Belfast’s famous Harland & Wolff shipyard in a £6 million ($7.3 million) deal, helping lift the business out of administration.
InfraStrata said on Tuesday it signed heads of terms to purchase the principal assets of Harland & Wolff Heavy Industries Limited and Harland & Wolff Group, which comprise of a multi-purpose fabrication facility, quaysides and docking facilities in the port in Northern Ireland.
The future of the yard, which built the Titanic passenger liner that sunk in the Northern Atlantic on its maiden voyage in 1912, had been under threat after entering administration in August after its Norwegian parent company, Dolphin Drilling (formerly Fred Olsen Energy) filed for bankruptcy earlier this year.
In June, Dolphin completed its financial restructuring after receiving the backing of investment firm Strategic Value Partners (SVPGlobal).
InfraStrata said the acquisition will enable it to bring in-house a large part of the fabrication requirements for the company’s Islandmagee gas storage project and proposed floating storage and regasification unit (FSRU) project.
All the yard’s 79 employees, who did not opt for voluntary redundancy earlier in the year, will be retained following completion of the acquisition.
InfraStrata said it plans to “significantly increase the size of the workforce by several hundred over the next five years as it progresses the development of its infrastructure projects”.
“The number of employees at the Islandmagee gas storage project will also scale to 400 during construction and will employ circa 60 personnel when in operation,” the energy company said.
“The acquisition of the Harland & Wolff Shipyard presents InfraStrata with an opportunity to create secondary revenue streams through contracts in defence, maritime and the energy sectors should such opportunities arise in future,” it added.
“This acquisition is a function of deep operational synergies between the various business segments of the company with Harland & Wolff underpinning the construction economics of the Islandmagee gas storage project and other future projects,” InfraStrata chief executive John Wood added.
“Our Islandmagee gas storage project will benefit greatly from their expertise in the energy sector, both technically and economically, and we look forward to growing the workforce significantly in the coming years.
“While our core priority will be to deliver our flagship project in Islandmagee, we believe there are opportunities to welcome potential new clients due to the diverse skill set at the facility,” Wood said.
InfraStrata is eyeing a final investment decision for Islandmagee by the end of the year.
The entire capacity of Islandmagee is expected to be 500 million cubic metres across all seven caverns once constructed and fully operational. First injection of gas is expected in 2022 and full commercial gas storage operations in 2023.
In addition, the new shipyard owner is working on an FSRU projects to facilitate the importation and regasification of liquified natural gas into the UK.
When Dolphin filed for bankruptcy earlier this year as part of a restructuring, it put the yard facility up for sale.
The yard built its last ocean liner, the Canberra, in 1961 and in recent years has relied mainly on repair and upgrade work on offshore rigs and vessels, as well as fabrication of foundation jackets for offshore wind turbines, though this has failed to arrest a steep decline in revenue.