Mersey gets new shipyard

A new shiprepair business has been launched in Bromborough, Wirral in the UK, which aims to build new vessels and could bid to break up toxic “ghost ships”.

The Merseyside Slipway Company is a joint venture between Liverpool-based Mersey Heritage Ship Repair and Warbreck Engineering.

The new venture has spent £1.5m buying the former McTay boat building slipway, construction hall and workshop facilities at Bromborough and has already clinched its first contract to repair and refurbish the Henty Oil bunkering barge ?Stanley H?.

Joint boss Eddie Dybell said the new firm is ambitious: “We hope to build vessels of 500 to 600 tonnes and we could bid for work to break up toxic vessels.” Controversy has raged over the prospect of Wirral docks being used to break up ships that have come to the end of their life. Northwestern Ship Repairers at the former Cammell Laird shipyard indicated it would be interested in bidding for such work but Dybell said: “Our facility is one-and-a-half miles away from Cammell Laird and in the middle of two petro-chemical companies, so it would not be as sensitive as the Cammell Laird site.”

He said the two partners aim to create new shipyard jobs, but initially the venture will help safeguard the jobs of their combined 70-strong workforce. Current work includes building barges for British Waterways in a deal by Warbreck Engineering.