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In Scotland, ministers of the Government intend to return the troubled shipyard of Ferguson Marine to the private sector, a senior Scottish National Party minister has confirmed.

The SNP minister Neil Gray and Cabinet Secretary for Wellbeing Economy, Fair Work and Energy, said it was hoped the shipyard (located downriver of Glasgow at Port Glasgow) could become commercially successful again.

Ferguson Marine as Afloat has reported over the years, has been at the centre of controversy over the construction of two newbuild ferries for CalMac, a subsidiary of David MacBrayne Ltd, which is wholly owned by Scottish Ministers.

The first of the two newbuilds of around 5,000 gross tonnage, the Glen Sannox and an unnamed twin are substantially delayed and overbudget.

Each of the 102m ferries have a capacity for 1,000 passengers, 127 cars and 16 lorries that are to serve island communities and tourism.

In March a report by Audit Scotland had raised doubts over the long-term viability of the shipyard, which was to have completed building the first of the ferries in 2018 at the yard that in the following year was nationalised.

For more, The Scotsman reports.

Published in Shipyards

William M Nixon has been writing about sailing in Ireland and internationally for many years, with his work appearing in leading sailing publications on both sides of the Atlantic. He has been a regular sailing columnist for four decades with national newspapers in Dublin, and has had several sailing books published in Ireland, the UK, and the US. An active sailor, he has owned a number of boats ranging from a Mirror dinghy to a Contessa 35 cruiser-racer, and has been directly involved in building and campaigning two offshore racers. His cruising experience ranges from Iceland to Spain as well as the Caribbean and the Mediterranean, and he has raced three times in both the Fastnet and Round Ireland Races, in addition to sailing on two round Ireland records. A member for ten years of the Council of the Irish Yachting Association (now the Irish Sailing Association), he has been writing for, and at times editing, Ireland's national sailing magazine since its earliest version more than forty years ago