Harland and wolff the famous ship builders are set to go into administration.
The yard that built the titanic has been for sale since last year. sad though it is it's because increasingly virtually impossible to compete with foreign ship builders such as Korea.
Labour, the government opposition is demanding that the business is nationalised (there answer to everything ) but if there is no work it doesn't solve the problem.
It's a sad day for Belfast.

Seems quite a few English companies sold their know how to S.Korea.
SK is an export economy.

Years ago, Babcock & Wilcox sold their 700 MW power plant tech to Doosan, S.K.
since 2010, Doosan started building mega power projects overseas (middle east, India)
They retain English firms as engineering consultants.

I saw a documentary years ago about the ship industry and how we were world leaders. but, they were all built with plate and rivets. In the early days when welding come along and made it quicker the rivet and boiler makers unions waged war against the welding system and stopped it. welding being quicker and cheaper was the new player. so, ship building went to foreign countries!
Unions again fail to have the foresight of progress at the expense of those they represent!

Big businesses, especially large manufacturing, want depressed wages and little if any government safety or environmental regulation, in order to increase profits and returns to share holders. Countries like Ireland, England, and the U.S. end up footing the bill.

Unions is one part of the problem no doubt; but seems something else is ailing British entrepreneurship. I don't think it is greed at the cost of the workers.

your new PM has promised that Britain will have their own manufactured satellite system. India is already doing it for over a decade!

True, but we've been giving all our technology to America
Plus we send millions in aid to India lol
It's the unions that messed up industry here. companies couldn't afford to have strike every week because of some stupid reason so they up and went else where.

Not clear about India receiving aid from UK; unless it is World Bank aided projects that you mean and that's tapering down.

The world is changing faster than before. Example, one of our state government's paying $500 million for the Hyperloop 1st phase - prototype is being tested in Nevada.

Hyper loop? Is that like the Cern collider in Switzerland?

A bit of history..

As the infamous shipyard circles the drain here's an article from 2008 titled
Sectarianism and the shipyard
And why many nationalists won't be to upset

The history of Harland and Wolff in many ways mirrored the history of Belfast, and the bitter divisions that took hold outside…



The history of Harland and Wolff in many ways mirrored the history of Belfast, and the bitter divisions that took hold outside its gates acted as a barrier to working-class solidarity, writes Kevin Johnson

WHEN ROBERT HICKSON offered the position of shipyard manager to 23-year-old Edward Harland, he had no reason to suppose that he was bringing to Belfast the man who would define, more than any other individual, the industrial future of Belfast.

Hickson had an ironworks in the Cromac area of Belfast, and established a yard building ships with the iron that he was finding difficulty getting rid of at a profit. He chose as his site the artificial island created from the spoil taken from the recently deepened channel into the new quays. It was known as Queen's Island, named in honour of the visit of Queen Victoria in 1849. His first manager, unfortunately, was a total incompetent. Hickson sacked him and put an advertisement in the papers.

Edward Harland arrived in Belfast in Christmas 1854. Son of a Scarborough doctor, he had gone against the wishes of his family to train as an engineer. His primary interest was the building of ships and he jumped at the chance of coming to Belfast.

His task was difficult, as the men were being paid above-average wages for below-average work. He cut wages and imposed a smoking ban. The men went on strike in protest. Undeterred, Harland went to Scotland and recruited skilled men from the Clyde. Past mismanagement was catching up with the firm, however, and creditors were demanding payment. Harland had to guarantee wages personally. Nevertheless, his determination prevailed. Men came back to work and he was able to appoint competent foremen. For the first time, the firm was making money.

The money wasn't enough for Hickson, however, whose creditors were still pressing. He offered to sell the yard to Harland for £5,000. This was a lot of money at the time, but Harland was able to raise it through the good offices of his "old and esteemed friend" GC Schwabe, a Liverpool businessman late of Hamburg. As part of the deal, Schwabe's nephew, Gustav Wolff, was to become Harland's personal assistant.

Harland had undertaken to complete Hickson's outstanding orders, but was able to obtain orders on his own account, again through the good offices of Schwabe. By 1859, pressure of work was increasing and he felt he needed a partner he could trust to supervise the firm while he was away soliciting orders. The man he chose was Gustav Wolff, and the firm of Harland Wolff was born.

FROM THE START, the firm was noted for its innovations. The partners tried to look at ships from the owners' point of view and made changes to design that allowed ships to travel further, carry larger cargoes, berth in smaller harbours, and require less maintenance than previously. When Schwabe introduced Wolff to Thomas Ismay, who had just bought the White Star Line, a new element came into their ship design.

Ismay had decided to work the North Atlantic trade. He would need new ships, and he came to a mutually beneficial agreement with Harland Wolff. They would build the ships at cost plus a fixed 4 per cent. To help Ismay raise the capital, both Harland and Wolff bought a substantial amount of shares in Ismay's company. The first White Star ship, Oceanic, was ordered in 1869. The last, Georgic, was in 1932. Throughout, they were characterised by speed, elegance and passenger comfort, so that even those passengers who travelled steerage class found ocean travel an enjoyable experience.

These developments were all taking place against the background of a divided town. One of the concessions that had been made to the Protestants of Ulster before Catholic emancipation could be granted was the Union of the Governments of Great Britain and Ireland. This meant that, even with full Catholic emancipation, Protestants would always be in a majority in any government. From the middle of the 19th century onwards, there was increasing pressure from Catholic politicians for a repeal of the Union. Protestants saw this was a threat to their freedoms, and opposed Repeal with all their vigour. When Daniel O'Connell visited the city, he required an RIC escort when he was leaving.

Protestants were confirmed in their fears by an increasingly triumphalist and confrontational Catholic clergy. Cardinal Paul Cullen declared that Protestants were not to be trusted, and claimed that he had never dined with one. Up until the 1840s, Catholics had formed a growing proportion of Belfast's population, peaking at roughly 36 per cent. This changed after the Famine, when a growing number of the newcomers to the town were rural Protestants, who brought with them what had previously been a mainly rural organisation, the Orange Order.

After a particularly violent summer in 1856, Rev Hugh Hanna preached a series of public sermons showing Catholics the errors of their ways. The violence went on into September. Every day, there were fights at the Custom House steps, and the group that protected Rev Hanna from the nationalist mob was made up of shipwrights from the yard, armed with staves. It was the first time that the shipyard men identified themselves with the cause that would typify them for the next century and a half, that of Protestant Ulster.

In 1864, there were more riots involving the shipyard workers. A group of Catholic navvies from the west of Ireland had been brought in to excavate new docks in the harbour. On August 15th, they attacked a national school in the Protestant district of Brown Square. Protestant workers from a nearby foundry spilled on to the streets to intervene. Fighting spread rapidly and there was shooting on both sides. The shipyard workers now appeared on the scene and attacked the Catholic Malvern Street National School. They then went to gun dealers in High Street and confiscated arms, while others went into hardware shops and took spades and shovels.

That's interesting Dino, thanks

Don't get me wrong Mikey. My interest in this thread is purely from tech point of view. You mentioned welding, and although I'm not an expert on ship building and oil rigs, i happen to be a welding engineer.

Consider power plant boilers as analogy:

Entire world (except Japan ^ Russia) follows, ASME, AWS, BIS, BWS & DIN (German) codes for steel & welding of high pressure, high temperature vessels.

SK may excel in manufacturing, (they do) but they are not technology generators. India is also lagging. Unlike electronics where one can buy parts from overseas and systems integrate; steel plants and such are built from over 50 years or more of legacy codes; very similar to jet engines.

(we are buying 130 Rafales from France, some 90 Boeing 7xx from US; Some 10 Appache choppers have already landed here. Not because we cannot manufacture, because we don't have design legacy)

Back to P Plants: India wants to move over from installing multiple units of 500 MW plants to more efficient 1000 MW plant, but like India, SK cannot engineer it. US, Russia have proven installations. So at some point SK stagnates.

UK has already stepped aside. So India, ends up buying from US or Russia (because of Russian credit terms).

This is what is trending here.

Very welcome Mikey, one of my Granddads was a plumber in the yard too..

It's a tunnel transport system. I posted a note on this in the Science forum.

Oh, cool. I think they said it's owned by a company in Sweden now. It amazes me why we have navy ships built in foreign countries, I know they are cheaper but some things should be made at home!

Been that way for years, sad for the workers...

It is sad. Like anything I guess. If you don't have an order there is nothing you can do.

Hopefully they work something out, it'll make a big change here if it goes..

Came on the radio here as well. Sad day for Belfast, sad day for the Six Counties as well

Harland and Wolff shipyard, one of the world's most famous shipyards, has been saved from closure

https://www.itv.com/news/utv/2019-10-01/harland-and-wolff-shipyard-saved-from-closure

Hi Dino,
Great news. heard it briefly on the radio