Trawler launched in UK

A Yarmouth shipbuilding yard recently launched a 19 metre trawler. The vessel, the ?Amethyst?, slid down the slipway at Richards Dry Dock & Engineering (RDDE) in Great Yarmouth, England, and will soon be towed to Macduff in Scotland to be fitted out.

Construction work has already begun on a second, larger trawler, which is due to be launched in the summer. RDDE, which has around 50 staff, was reopened in 1995 when it became part of the Gardline Group. Since then the company has expanded both the ship building and ship repairs sides of the business.

Richards general manager Simon Coote said: “The vessel we launched today was the 14th we have built for Macduff in Scotland. We’ve another under construction and there will hopefully be another to follow. The shipyard supplies us all the steel, the parts and so on and we assemble it. It’s a complicated job and needs skilled workers. Our main business is ship repair, which is probably 60% of our business, but it can have peaks and troughs. That is why the ship building we do is important for us as it is more steady work. To remain competitive we have focused on building steel hulls, rather than assembling entire vessels.”

The bulk of the ship repairs business is focused on the offshore gas industry, repairing rig support vessels as well as other workboats which are based in the region, although in recent times the customer base has begun to widen.