UP to 10 new young apprentices are being recruited as part of the rebirth of Ferguson’s shipyard in Port Glasgow, the Tele can reveal.

Bosses from yard owners Clyde Blowers today confirmed there is now a workforce of over 60 at the Newark site and they are continuing steps to recruit a new management team and office staff.

They are also looking to take on up to 10 modern apprentices in a bid to further increase numbers and help the business grow and develop.

It will be the start of an annual intake of apprentices who will help with orders, including the recently-awarded £12 million contract to build a third eco-friendly hybrid power vessel.

Ferguson’s is also said to be the frontrunner to secure another multi-million pound ferry order for Caledonian MacBrayne’s Ardrossan to Brodick route, which will be awarded in March.

But bosses say their key priority at the moment is to continue growing the workforce, which was wiped out when 70 staff were axed when the company went into administration three months ago.

In an exclusive interview with the Tele, Keith Mitchell, interim chief executive of Ferguson’s, said: “Part of everything that Clyde Blowers does is that we always have a large training and education element to whatever we do. When we buy a business we always focus heavily on training, educating and developing the workforce.

“So part of that matrix is new blood coming in at the bottom in terms of apprentices.

“There are five apprentices there at the moment, they are all in their final year and we need to re-energise that scheme.

“I would suggest we would probably take on somewhere between five and 10 apprentices in this coming intake.

“I very much doubt it will be fewer than five and it’s unlikely to be more than 10 because you have the problem in the training and the journeymen to be able to train them, so it’s going to be a kind of a balance around that.

“Certainly we think the market is buoyant enough to sustain a decent annual intake of apprentices.” Bosses admit it is too early to finalise numbers but the recruitment process is expected to begin early in the new year with a view to new apprentices starting in the summer.

Mr Mitchell, pictured below, said: “When we acquired the business obviously they had no employees because the first thing the administrator did was put all of them on notice and paid most of them off.

“We’ve taken on all of those people but of course there aren’t enough of them — I think there are 61 at the moment — to build a ship, so we are in the process of recruiting just now.

“My main focus at the moment is recruiting a management team.

“The management team in the last two or three years has been effectively decimated, so we are in the process of trying to put that together again and we will do that over the coming weeks and months. “Already I have put out three or four offers so far and there’s another two or three we are still interviewing for at management level.

“We have an order for a ferry to be delivered in the next 18 months or so and we are building a workforce in order to manage with that.

“That would probably go up to 75 or 80 full-time employees on the site with the opportunity of other people on more of a contracting basis so we can be flexible around that.

“It might be that 80 goes up to 100 but it’s unlikely to be less than 80.”