Ferguson Marine's 'Rolls Royce' ferries hailed by MSP

Members of the Scottish Parliament’s Net Zero, Energy & Transport Committee were shown around the Port Glasgow shipyard today in advance of taking further evidence from its chief executive David Tydeman on Tuesday.

Speaking to the Telegraph after the visit, committee convener and MSP Edward Mountain said he had been impressed by the ‘tremendous’ standard of workmanship on the overdue and overbudget two vessels, MV Glen Sannox and MV Glen Rosa.  

The Conservative politician, alongside fellow committee member Jackie Dunbar MSP, took part in a tour of the vessels and met with senior yard management, members of the workforce and trade union representatives during the visit.

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Mr Mountain told the Tele: “It [Glen Sannox] is going to be a really nice boat.

“My sadness is that we didn’t get this in 2018, when we should have got it.

“We heard that commissioning is going very well, the committee is meeting on Tuesday and we’ll hear on Tuesday when the sea trials are going to be completed.

“It’s meant to be the end of May and then [she’ll be] handed over to CalMac which will mean they’ve got another two months after that to do the trials and then bring it into service thereafter.

“My feeling is these may slip marginally but not that much more.”

The convenor said he hopes to see Glen Sannox in service by September, but did not want to comment on an exact date given the vessel’s now-infamous history of delays.

He urged locals to keep supporting its yard and the workforce despite the difficulties it has faced in recent years on the dual-fuel vessels for CalMac.

He said: “Glen Sannox is a good-looking boa. I think the management of the whole contract has let down the delivery of the ferries, which has caused a huge problem for the workforce because they’re the ones who are getting the blame for it.

“It’s not the workforce who are to blame in my mind, it’s the next level up.”

Mr Mountain says he feels the yard’s future could lie in a small vessels replacement programme, which involves replacing seven ferries with all-electric boats in the first phase, with three more to follow in phase two.

He said his committee could not consider calls for the Scottish Government to directly give that the contract to the Port Glasgow yard, due to uncertainties about the feasibility of such an award.

He said: “I think it [the yard’s future] could be in the small vessels project.

“These two ferries are Rolls Royce ferries, probably overcomplicated for what we needed and probably too much of a mouthful for this yard to have taken on.

“Perhaps the smaller boats that are coming up in the future might have been a better option for them and I think if I look back to Hull 803, which was a salmon farm management boat, which was an excellent project.”

The committee’s visit to the yard came after it was revealed that the commissioning of the dual-fuel Glen Sannox’s liquified natural gas propulsion system had been hit by delays.

But Mr Mountain said that the impression he got during the visit was that the system was “fairly close” to completion.

He added: “I was hearing today that to actually fill up the tanks in the ferries is three lorries worth of fuel and that’s got to come up from Kent. So every two weeks three lorries are coming up the road to fill up the ferries with LNG, and one’s got to ask whether that fuel is perhaps the now the most environmental fuel you can get and whether it’s the right decision.

“But that’s the problem with making a design and making a contract over 10 years ago.”

The Highlands and Islands MSP added that it was important for the shipyard to receive clarity on what the future holds for it.

He said: “A decision needs to be made about what’s going to happen to this yard and taking it into the future because all they’re working on at the moment are these two ferries.

“When these ferries are complete there’s going to be a gap in their order books and hopefully, fingers crossed, 801 is going to be out of this yard by the end of this May and 802 will then be launched.

“There will then be vacancies, there’s gaps on the slipway and we need to stop that or they need clarity.”