Four contracts worth almost £33m have been awarded for work on Royal Navy aircraft carriers, the Aircraft Carrier Alliance announced yesterday.
Seven suppliers will provide services and parts for the ships, including a storage facility near Glasgow, where components and equipments for the two ships will be securely stored before being fitted onto the carriers.
Wincanton, the logistical and distribution services company, won the contract, worth £18m, for the storage facility. Other companies involved in the contract include Balfour Beatty Engineering Services, who will be paid £15m to install cables on the modules being constructed at Govan, Edmunson Electrical Ltd and Jetway Associates of Wiltshire, who will supply part of the fire fighting equipment on the ships.
Commenting on the contract awards, Aircraft Carrier Alliance (ACA) programme director Geoff Searle said: “The ACA has been making excellent progress over the last 12 months, both in the build of the Queen Elizabeth and across the supply chain. We have currently placed around £1.25billion worth of contracts with companies right across the UK, which means that the majority of contracts to supply parts for these impressive ships have now been agreed.”
The Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers will weigh 65’000 at full displacement- over three times the size of the current Invincible Class aircraft carriers. The first ship, HMS Queen Elizabeth, is expected to enter service in 2016. There is speculation that it may be sold to a foreign power.
Lorenzo Spoerry
