UK shipyard wins award for international trade

The Wight Shipyard Company, based in East Cowes on the Isle of Wight, builds high-speed passenger ferries, tourist vessels and commercial workboats for the windfarm support vessel market, both domestically and internationally.

The Wight Shipyard was one of 205 organisations nationally to be recognised with a prestigious Queen’s Award for Enterprise in 2021. The award recognised the company’s achievements since its establishment in 2016 by Sir Charles Dunstone and Peter Morton.

Over the past three years, nearly 60% of the company’s turnover has been generated from the export market. Furthermore, the employment opportunities created on the Isle of Wight have made the Wight Shipyard Company a thriving hub of innovation in shipbuilding and high-tech manufacturing with a highly skilled local workforce.

While the domestic fast ferry market is significant in the UK, the Wight Shipyard Company has also focused on competing internationally. The company has benefited from its membership of Interferry, the shipping association representing the ferry industry globally, while it also works closely with the ferry broking industry.

To date the company’s three largest export orders have come from Austria, Mexico and Malta. An Austrian ferry, operating on the Danube, for Twin City Liners was delivered in 2018. In 2019, two high speed ferries were completed ahead of schedule and were the first vessels exported from the UK to Mexico since 1980 for Ultramar, Cancun. This was followed by the build of four high-speed ferries for the Maltese operator, Captain Morgan Cruises in 2020.