Interview International Cruise Ship Industry - CRUISE SHIP
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interview CRUISE SHIP International Cruise Ship Industry Focusing on innovation in the global cruise industry InfraStrata CEO John Wood pictured in Appledore's building dock
Continuing our series of Interviews with the together to diversify the shipyard’s portfolio to
‘movers and shakers’ operating in the cruise cater for commercial vessels, oil and gas
industry, ICSI spoke with InfraStrata CEO, structures, cruise ships, ferries, defence and
John Wood about how he saw the future of renewable assets, encompassing the whole
the now wholly-owned shipyards in the asset lifecycle from design through building to
Harland & Wolff Group. de-commissioning.
An opportunity was also seen to build, repair
InfraStrata plc is a London Stock and refurbish small expedition to larger cruise
Exchange-listed firm focused on strategic vessels.
infrastructure projects and physical asset
life-cycle management.
It completed the purchase of Harland & Wolff Q: With the number of cruise ships idling
(Belfast) in December, 2019 from the around the southern UK coast, are you
administrator and in August, 2020 the hopeful of persuading some of them to come
organisation paid £7 mill to acquire the North to Belfast prior to their return to service -
Devon based Appledore Shipyard – now known drydocking and class dockings?
as Harland & Wolff (Appledore). A: At present, there are no other drydock
More recently, the organisation has taken over facilities in the UK for cruise vessels, so
a further two yards based in Scotland. Harland naturally both Harland & Wolff (Belfast) and
& Wolff (Methil) and Harland & Wolff (Arnish), Harland & Wolff (Appledore) are attractive
which had previously been under the banner choices.
of Burntisland Fabrications Ltd (BiFab). We also have two of Europe’s largest
Following the purchase of Harland & Wolff, drydocks, alongside a covered drydock in
InfraStrata started to market its huge facilities Appledore. Not to mention Belfast being the
to the cruise ship sector in March of last year. home to the leading interior outfitting
contractors for major cruise ship conversions.
Q: Can you tell us a bit about yourself? Currently, we have around 13 inquiries from a
number of cruise ship operators around the
A: I started my shipping career as an engineer
coast looking for various work and repairs.
on board P&O’s iconic liner turned cruise ship
‘Canberra’, before moving over to sailing on However, of course, we are also targeting the
the sister brand vessels with Princess Cruises vessels idling around the UK coast for
and then returning to P&O Cruises, finishing refurbishments and conditions of class work
my time at sea on board ‘Oriana’. before they re-enter service.
I came ashore and took up a role as a We anticipate there will be a huge demand
superintendent, looking after cruise vessel put on the repair yards, possibly by the end of
refits and refurbishments and undertaking the second quarter of this year, to cope with
major vessel upgrades prior to moving over to the number of cruise ships needing attention
the oil and gas industry based in Houston, US before returning to service.
and Australia.
I held senior posts with BAE Systems and was
Q: One of the mainstays of the local repair
more recently the Global Head of Oil and Gas
sector down the years has been seasonal
with Aurecon, a global engineering and
Irish Sea ferry work. Has the volume kept up
advisory firm, prior to joining InfraStrata.
this year?
A: Absolutely – in fact, we have had
Q: What attracted InfraStrata to Harland & back-to-back ferry dockings since September,
Wolff? 2020.
A: InfraStrata saw an under-utilised asset. As We're proud to say that Harland & Wolff
an investor in projects, a strategy was put (Belfast) has signed a multiple fleet deal with
The ‘bubble carpet’
www.cruise-ship-industry.com
Wood shows UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson around Appledore
Stena Line and has serviced six Stena ferries comes to our cruise and ferry sector. We offer
so far this year. a full lifecycle of services across all our
markets, including cruise and ferry. However,
one service we’re really focussing on is major
Q: Has the export finance capability helped? cruise refurbishment and conversion
A: The Prime Minister, Boris Johnson has opportunities.
stated that he would like to see a resurgence We will continue to monitor the market and
of shipbuilding and repair in the UK and as a may make more acquisitions in the future if it
result, the UK Government is looking to offer advances our market entry.
export finance and we are currently working
with the UK Export Finance department to
that end. Q: Are there still enough sub-contractors in
Today, there is a large Government-backed the area to allow H&W to undertake major
study to reintroduce shipbuilding, shiprepair jobs? I think that Harland & Wolff has
and ship conversions. In fact, we welcomed re-introduced an apprentice scheme. Does
the Prime Minister to our Appledore site last this mean that more skilled labour will be
August to officially open the yard, where he taken on depending on the workload?
confirmed his intention for the UK to be at the A: The skills are here, and our priority now is
forefront of the shipbuilding and repair sector ensuring stable employment at the yard -
moving forward. which we are confident in achieving.
Q: In the cruise ship sector, are you also We started with around 60 employees at the
marketing for refurbishments/upgrades as yard and we are now up to around 350,
well as the more traditional class docking including sub-contractors. However, we would
work? like to see the number of people grow to
A: We’re looking at all types of work when it 700-800 as we progress.
www.cruise-ship-industry.com
Last September, at Harland & Wolff European-based cruise ships? - again there
(Appledore), we held a careers open day, are a few yards in the Mediterranean, which
which attracted inquiries from over 1,000 handle cruise ships and MSC has done a deal
people. This particular yard is ideal for with Malta.
building smaller expedition type cruise ships A: The opening of our new Miami base is an
as it has a covered building dock and already exciting addition to the company. Now we
we’ve had a couple of inquiries for small have a Harland & Wolff presence for US
expeditions ships. cruise shipowners on their doorstep. Our
In February of this year, we announced that representatives in Miami are a small team of
our apprenticeship scheme would be cruise industry experts and has decades of
launching later in the year across our sites in operational experience and a sales function.
Belfast and Appledore. The Miami team will integrate the yard and
the cruise vessel operators.
Apprenticeships offered will be across three
departments - trade, technical - and business What we offer is very different from the very
support and as part of the scheme, large repair facilities on the US east and west
apprentices will have the chance to coasts. This means we can be leaner and
experience working across Harland & Wolff’s much more flexible.
five key sectors: cruise & ferries, defence, oil We will be looking across a varied range of
& gas, commercial and renewables. cruise ships, not limiting ourselves to just the
We’re looking forward to welcoming a new European based vessels – we have an
generation into our yards. internationally compelling offer. We have two
of the largest docks in the UK and two of the
largest in Europe, so we have a good
Q: Obviously, the setting up of a Miami office footprint.
was intended to woo the predominantly
US-owned cruise lines. You have severe
competition from US and Bahamian-based Q: I read that Harland & Wolff is looking to
yards, will you be looking for mainly deepen the largest of the two docks. What is
the reasoning behind this?
Stena is a regular user of the Belfast repair facilities
www.cruise-ship-industry.com
Three Viking Cruises' sisterships seen in Belfast last year
A: The 556 m long by 93 m wide dock is to be addition being a multi-million dollar robotic
deepened to allow the very large cruise ships panel line for reducing the cost of welding
being built today to access the drydock. sections together.
There is only one other dock in Europe that
can handle the next generation of cruise Q: Has the pandemic made much of a
ships, so it is incredibly important that we can difference to work at the yard?
compete and offer a UK base for these ships.
By taking the time to upgrade the yard’s A: Naturally, we anticipated a slight reduction
capability and capacity, we’re actively in services, however, the work has kept up
supporting the Government’s aim to bring and since we acquired the yard back in
back great British shipbuilding. December, 2019, we’ve had over 30 vessels
visit us for a multitude of services.
The deepening project will also give us the
opportunity to dock two or three cruise ships During the pandemic, we welcomed three
simultaneously side-by-side and give us the sister Viking Cruise ships to Harland & Wolff
option of undertaking large conversion work. (Belfast) - this was the first time since the
White Star trio of ‘Olympic’-class ocean liners
We are making the dock ready for the next that we have had three sister ships in the yard
generation cruise ships, such as Royal simultaneously.
Caribbean’s 200,000 gt plus giants.
Despite the current situation, we’re still
The dock is also fitted with an intermediate offering our full range of services (technical
docking gate, which will allow us to use the service, in-service support, fabrication and
dock’s two sections independently for construction, repair and maintenance,
separate dockings. conversion and decommissioning) across our
Last August, we took advantage of the quiet five sectors - oil and gas, commercial,
period to refurbish and upgrade the Belfast defence, cruise and ferry and renewables.
yard dock gate – this was last done 15 years Our Belfast and Appledore yards are open
ago. and ready for work. We are fully COVID-19
In addition, we have invested heavily in the compliant with a fantastic team behind our
plant and equipment with the most recent onsite health and safety.You can also read
