{"id":547484,"date":"2026-04-24T02:19:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T02:19:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/547484\/"},"modified":"2026-04-24T02:19:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T02:19:08","slug":"state-owned-shipyard-blocked-from-bidding-for-new-calmac-ferry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/547484\/","title":{"rendered":"State-owned shipyard &#8216;blocked&#8217; from bidding for new CalMac ferry"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Last year the Society of Maritime Industries told MPs that a combination of better state support, tax breaks and lower labour costs typically allowed overseas shipyards to undercut UK yards by 10-20%. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The UK&#8217;s National Shipbuilding Strategy has called for social value &#8211; things like training and supply chain benefits &#8211; to be scored as part of publicly-funded orders, in order to give UK shipbuilders a better chance of winning contracts. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">CMAL has rejected this, arguing it could conflict with its duties under Scottish procurement law which requires it to adhere to principles of &#8220;equal treatment&#8221; and &#8220;non-discrimination&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">CalMac ferries were among a 150 vessel, 30-year pipeline of potential orders listed in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gov.uk\/government\/publications\/refresh-to-the-national-shipbuilding-strategy\" class=\"ssrcss-1e0jzsh-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">2022 refresh of the National Shipbuilding Strategy, external<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But since then many of those vessels have gone to overseas shipyards. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">A Ministry of Defence contract to provide 24 Royal Navy support vessels such as tugs was subcontracted to Serco which then gave the shipbuilding order to Dutch firm Damen. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">An order for a new Northern Lighthouse Board vessel, Pole Star, went to Spain and CMAL has placed ferry orders worth about \u00a3570m with overseas companies in Turkey, Poland and China since 2022. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last year the Society of Maritime Industries told MPs that a combination of better state support, tax breaks&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":547485,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[84,59,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-547484","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-gb","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=547484"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547484\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/547485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=547484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=547484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=547484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}