Austal acquires shipyard in Philippines

The move enables Austal to establish shipbuilding operations at the West Cebu Industrial Park at Balamban, in the province of Cebu. Austal says it will invest a further $5 million in improving the yard’s facilities.

Austal hopes to begin vessel construction in the first quarter of 2012, dependant on orders, and expects to employ about 30 workers during the start-up phase. Future workforce growth is expected as market demand grows, and the site allows for expansion when future operational and market conditions require.

Austal will primarily construct small and medium sized aluminium passenger ferries, work boats and transfer vessels such as Austal’s Wind Express series of wind farm support vessels at the shipyard. Which is purpose-designed and built for building aluminium vessels of that size and type and will have the skilled workforce and facilities to be able to undertake service and maintenance work. Austal is retaining its large commercial vessel manufacturing capability in Australia, and the Austal USA operation is similarly unaffected.

The Philippines yard has a history of aluminium vessel fabrication, and has previously delivered medium and high speed ferries, patrol boats and specialist work boats to operators based in Europe, Mexico, Australia and Asia.

Austal CEO Andrew Bellamy said: “Our strategic review earlier this year found that there is strong demand in specific segments of the international commercial vessel market, such as fast crew transfer boats, work boats and 30m to 50m ferries. With our Australian and United States manufacturing operations increasingly defence focussed, we identified the need to regionalise our manufacturing base in order to be successful in those commercial vessel markets.”

Austal says its significant intellectual property in the design and construction of commercial vessels will be utilised at its Philippines operations, which will help ensure that Austal’s quality and performance standards are maintained.

“Our planned infrastructure enhancements combined with the existing pool of skilled local tradespeople and ancillary industries will support the same safe, efficient, high quality production we achieve in our other shipyards,” said Bellamy. “Austal now has an order book of approximately $1.8 billion, nearly all of it related to defence work and over 80 per cent attributable to our US operations. The new shipyard in the Philippines provides the right foundation to grow that order book further through increased commercial vessel sales.”