REPORT: MARITIME SECTOR
78 INSIDER March 2020 http://www.insider.co.uk
of the shipping industry, but the
common element is we employ naval
architects, we employ structural
engineers and we design, charter
or modify vessels of behalf our
customers,” MacSween says.
Another major project Malin
is behind is the plan for a Scottish
Marine Technology Park at Old
Kilpatrick, West Dunbartonshire
which aims to include a marine
research and innovation hub, a
large fabrication plant and a deep
water jetty with a 1,000 tonne ship
hoist (see Dunbartonshire Regional
Review page 89 for more detail on
the marine park).
Listing these companies in
Glasgow alone gives some sense of
the range of services the sector in
Scotland offers and its. But this is
largely unknown, a state of affairs the
sector is determined to do something
about. They are trying to tackle the
fact little is known beyond a handful
of shipyards and what they produce.
Lang says: “The story we’re trying
to get out there is that there’s more
to maritime and marine than the
shipbuilding side of it. There is
so much more of it and most of it
incredibly positive. Shipbuilding is
important but the actual construction
of the vessel is quite a modest
proportion of the overall cost. The
largest proportion is the components
and the equipment that you bring in.
“But if, for example, you are a
component supplier in Scotland your
market is the world, you can market
to every shipbuilder in the world,
you can market to every ship in the
world. Your market share potentially
is much greater.”
He says that high-end technology
is where the industry wants to be to
sell and also to attract young people
into the industry.
The true picture is striking: the
maritime sector in Scotland is a
£10bn turnover business. “That’s
comparable with many of the other
higher-profile sectors,” Lang says, and
it is 23 per cent of the UK industry.
Its economic contribution or
gross value added is £3.6bn or
25 per cent of the UK industry’s GVA
and between 40,000 and 50,000 jobs.
Lang says: “We’re punching way
above our weight in the UK and
London has woken up to this and the
Scottish Government is waking up
to this as well. When Humza Yousaf
was the transport minister, he was
very supportive and indeed Scottish
Enterprise has been very supportive.”
The Maritime Cluster was formed
in 2017 after the sector had a visit
from the Lord Mayor of London.
“After the lunch nobody left,
everybody was sitting round talking,
discussing our common problems,
I thought there’s something to
capture here. Five of us decided to act
positively and from that the Cluster
grew quickly. It seemed to chime
with everyone, the timing was right
and people recognised that more
communication was beneficial.”
In 2018, with the support of
economic development agency
Scottish Enterprise, the Cluster
commissioned a report from
Optimat, the management
consultancy, analysing the strengths
of the maritime sector in Scotland
and reviewing other clusters from
Singapore to San Diego.
Lang says that work has been done
over the past two-and-a-bit years to
formalise the Cluster and work on a
series of workshops focusing on the
technologies that sector businesses
are adopting and could adopt.The workshops, each led by
a Cluster company, will look at
innovative technologies and how
they could be applied to new services
that businesses can develop and use
here and which can then be exported.
Lang cites the example of
autonomous vessels. “You hear
about the Scandinavians and
how far advanced they are but
the autonomous testing ranging
in Scotland is the most advanced
in the world. There are a lot of
military applications to autonomous
technology but there are a lot of
commercial applications as well.
“We also take the view that one
of the most successful sectors is
the gaming industry in Dundee.
The difference between gaming
technology and automaton
technology on ships is not so great –
so there are parallels there that you
can develop and investigate. We are
trying to break down silos and join
dots and push out the message the
value of the maritime contribution in
Scotland is enormous.”
Another significant part of the
sector is in education. Within that
short stretch of the River Clyde is
City of Glasgow College’s Riverside
Campus. Paul Little, the college
principal outlines the scale of its
contribution: “This college trains a
third of all the cadet officers for the
UK merchant navy. If you go on to
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Paul Little, City of Glasgow College (below)Malin Group has turned the South Rotunda
into modern officesCity of
Glasgow
CollegeScottish Maritime Cluster directors (L-R)
Kevin Hobbs, Douglas Lang, Patrick CarnieAbove left: L-R: Colin
McMurray, Clyde Marine
Training; Patrick Carnie,
Babcock International;
Douglas Lang, Anglo-
Eastern UK; then
Minister for Transport
and the Islands Humza
Yousaf; Neil Amner,
Anderson Strathern
and Kevin Hobbs,
CMAL, at the launch of
the Scottish Maritime
Cluster in 2017