Mersey Yard Lands Local Ferry Order

Following more than a year of detailed negotiations, the contract award by the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority calls for a low-carbon vessel of about 50m in length, designed in-house by Cammell Laird and built wholly at the Birkenhead yard.

Although the company has maintained a healthy workload of shiprepair and conversion business and hull section fabrication subcontracts, the ferry deal signifies its first newbuild project since the completion of the polar research ship Sir David Attenborough three years ago.

The new vessel for the Mersey crossing will supersede a ferry originally built over 60 years ago but which has undergone extensive upgrading and re-powering in the interim.

Besides advances in operating efficiency and carbon footprint, the newbuld project will deliver greater comfort and accessibility for passengers, and an enhanced travel experience.

Cammell Laird said that the vessel will harness ‘green’ technology, using a diesel-electric propulsion system in a design conceived for future conversion to full electric propulsion as and when viable. Scheduled for completion towards the end of 2025, the ferry will feature an exhaust aftertreatment system to cut NOx emissions from the diesel prime movers and promising a standard in excess of current UK and international criteria.

The specification includes propulsors of the Azipull type, a well proven Kongsberg azimuthing and pulling thruster incorporating the propeller forward of the gear housing, conferring high manoeuvrability along with fuel saving performance.

The Mersey ferries provide a commuter link between Liverpool and the Wirral peninsula, and also undertake cruises on the river and adjoining Manchester Ship Canal. In addition to the newbuild investment, the Combined Authority also intends to implement a renovation scheme for the vessel that will be retained, as well as upgrading the Seacombe Ferry Terminal on the Wirral.

For the longer term, a second newbuild is anticipated, depending on the Authority’s ability to generate the requisite funding.

The current ferries came into service in the 1960s and were constructed at the former Philip & Son yard in Dartmouth, Devon, as the 46m sisters Mountwood and Woodchurch. After extensive renewal in the early 1990s, including replacement of the Crossley propulsion machinery by Wartsila engines, the twin-screw vessels were recommissioned as the Royal Iris of the Mersey and Snowdrop, respectively.

Part of the APCL group, which includes the A&P repair yard network, Cammell Laird has a track record over the past 10 years in producing small ferries for the domestic market. The period has seen the deliveries of the 50m car ferries Sound of Seil and Sound of Soay to Western Ferries of Scotland in 2013, the completion during 2016 of the 41m ro-pax Strangford II for Northern Ireland service, followed in 2019 by the handover of the 74m freight ferry Red Kestrel to Southampton-based Red Funnel.

Recently adding to the yard’s production flow, Cammell Laird has won a subcontract involving the construction and assembly of hull units for the fourth in the series of eight Royal Navy Type 26 frigates ordered from BAE Systems on the Clyde. Similar work on the frigate programme has also been assigned to A&P Tyne.

Cammell Laird has played a support role to BAE Systems in a range of preceding naval projects, including units for the latest RN submarines and aircraft carriers.