{"id":128451,"date":"2024-09-17T23:57:11","date_gmt":"2024-09-17T13:57:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.worldcargonews.com\/?p=49238"},"modified":"2024-09-17T23:57:11","modified_gmt":"2024-09-17T13:57:11","slug":"titanic-builder-sinks-into-administration-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=128451","title":{"rendered":"Titanic builder sinks into administration again"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/span>UK shipbuilders Harland & Wolff, famous for building the Titanic liner, has hit the financial rocks for the second time in five years. The Belfast, Northern Ireland, headquartered business has built vessels for use all around the world, including a line of tankers in the 1990s. However, the business has periodically struggled and has filed for administration, a legal instrument similar to the American Chapter 11 bankruptcy.<\/p>\n

Harland & Wolff is once again on the brink of disappearing. The massive yellow gantry cranes that loom over the city of Belfast could be all that\u2019s left of the once vibrant shipbuilder. The cranes are historic monuments, but their presence over the city could soon be the only remnant of the business which once employed around 35,000.<\/p>\n

Overdue creditors<\/h2>\n

A statement from the company, issued to investors<\/a>, said that an application for a \u00a3200m line of credit from the UK Export Finance (UKEF) had been rejected. \u201cThe absence of an appropriate funding structure has left the loss-making Company in a difficult financial position,\u201d said the statement.<\/p>\n

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Harland & Wolff has a long reputation for engineering excellence<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Harland & Wolff said that, instead, additional funding is to be made available by its current commercial lender, Riverstone Credit Partners, of US$25m (about \u00a320m), which has since been committed and continues to be utilised to support the business.\u00a0 \u201cTrading has been challenging given a significant value of overdue creditors across the Group overall and the Company in particular,\u201d said the statement. \u201cThis in turn led to temporary or continuing suspension of ongoing payments.\u201d<\/p>\n

Liners, latterly ferries<\/h2>\n

Harland & Wolff may be synonymous with Belfast, but the company is diversified into specialist marine engineering<\/a>. The company runs three other modest-sized dockyards for repair and refitting. One is in Devon, England, and the other two in Scotland. Work at these yards is continuing. The Belfast yard has not built ships since the early 2000\u2019s having finished a line of Suezmax oil tankers for Fred Olsen and a short series of drilling ships and ferries in 2002. H&W recently secured an overseas contract to upgrade facilities in the Falkland Islands<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Ship in repair dock at Belfast<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The company is a shadow of its former self. In Belfast, it currently employs just 800, and even these jobs are at risk. The shipyard made its name building the majority of the liner fleet for the White Star line, the owners of the Titanic, which was one of three liners built to the same specification. Harland & Wolff was again at its peak again during and just after the Second World War. However, the speciality was then oil tankers, which continued to be the Belfast yard\u2019s mainstay. The last keels laid down were for two commercial ferries launched in 2003 for the now defunct British-flagged Bank Line.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Harland and Wolff, the Belfast shipyard that built some of the world\u2019s most iconic cruise liners, and latterly oil tankers, is in financial trouble again<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":49241,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13411,13412,471,4991,12339,85],"tags":[12159],"class_list":["post-128451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-belfast","category-harland-wolff","category-news","category-northern-ireland","category-ports-terminals","category-uk","tag-world-cargo-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=128451"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128451\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":128861,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128451\/revisions\/128861"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=128451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=128451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=128451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}