REPORT: MARITIME SECTOR
http://www.insider.co.uk March 2020 INSIDER 79
a cruise ship or indeed a container ship or
any merchant ship you’ve probably got a
one in three chance the ship’s captain has
been trained by us or a one in three chance
the chief engineer has been trained by us.
The college has got a world-class reputation
in maritime, nautical science and marine
engineering and we celebrated last year our
50th anniversary of having a very successful
naval college on the banks of the River Clyde.”
About five years ago the college invested
£70m in a new building on Clydeside, the
only one of the four UK naval colleges to
have a new rather than refurbished building.
Little says this allows the college to
break new ground and embrace the latest
in technology in its training of not only
officers, but also ratings for the merchant
navy fleet. “As a college we’re trying to be
inclusive and we’re trying to pioneer new
access pathways into the industry.”
Its curriculum also includes an Access to
Maritime course for people who have no
background in the industry. He says that
the college works in partnership with other
training institutions including the North
Atlantic Fishing College in Shetland and
Clyde Marine Training.
“We can actually help shape the industry,
make it more aware of, for example, its
responsibilities towards climate change,”
he says. “Some of our technology is five
years ahead of industry, so we’ve got very
advanced ships and engine simulation
technologies. We’ve got in excess of 50
different types of simulators, ranging from
desk top right through to actual simulation
of a bridge of a ship, which allows for
360-degree visibility. So as you engage in
a simulated watch of between four and
six hours, that’s all carefully monitored,
analysed and researched.”
He says that the college also has a corridor
of 180-degree simulators and they all can
engage in fleet operations. “So we could
operate a series of ships and engine control
simulations at the same time where we’re
training trainee engineers to engage with
trainee ships captains. And you might
find the next day we’ve got a real engineer
and a real ship’s captain who have come to
refresh their qualification in bridge team
management, or whatever professional
qualification is required by the industry.”
Kevin Hobbs is the CEO of Caledonian
Marine Assets Ltd or CMAL, and another
founding director of the Cluster. “It’s a
strange one because the vast majority of
people in Scotland if not the UK think [of ]
shipbuilding and shipping and maritime
things ‘we once were a great nation but
all of that has now dissipated and is no
more’. But yet when you start scratching
the surface and realise the number of jobs,
the turnover, the GVA associated with it in
Scotland, it actually makes you realise there
is a large, pretty much unseen and unsung
maritime sector out there. We had a meeting
[in February] with the then UK shipping
minister Nusrat Ghani and she was very
interested in the issue of how in future we
as a sector are going to attract the necessary
pool of talent given we’re not particularly
good at shouting about what we do.”
CMAL was formed in 2006 to hold
Scotland plc’s ferry assets that run lifeline
services to the west coast islands and the
ports that service them. Ferry services to
Orkney and Shetland were added in April- Its assets range from very small vessels
and small slipways to major ships and the
Oban Ferry Terminal, which serves a total
of seven islands. CMAL’s 31 vessels for the
Western Isles include two ferries being built
at Ferguson Marine, a contract that has
caused much media and political interest. In
addition to those services run by Caledonian
MacBrayne, Serco Northlink Ferris runs
five – three ferries and two cargo ships –
from the mainland to Orkney and Shetland.
CMAL’s responsibilities include managing
and designing and building new vessels
and ports, as they need replaced. CMAL is
investing £9m in vessel resilience.
Further significant recent investment in
the sector was in the King George V Dock
(KGV) on the Clyde near the Braehead
shopping centre on the junction between
Glasgow and Renfrewshire. The dock, built
in 1931, dates back to the glory days of the
Clyde but with the purchase of a mutli-
docker crane it handles the commodities
of today including biomass, agri-bulks,
renewables and metals.
Andrew Hemphill, port director at
Clydeport, part of the Peel Ports Group
that owns the facility, says: “We have seen
encouraging growth and new customers
and we’re going from strength to strength.
The vessels coming up the Clyde are getting
larger, in line with the developments in
shipping. KGV currently has a vessel
alongside that is 180m long (a football pitch
is 105m) so we are handling some very large
ships and substantial tonnages.
“And it’s not just KGV that’s evolved
either. Greenock Ocean Terminal hasThe volumes have changed
over the years but they have
been increasing, and through
investment in the plant we
have doubled the workforce
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Andrew Hemphill, Clydeportsignificantly diversified in recent years. We
are now in a unique position thanks to our
Irish Sea hubs. Mega ocean container ships
can now call directly into Liverpool, which
acts as a feeder hub to us in Greenock,
Ireland and Manchester, allowing closer
import and export routes to market.”
Hemphill adds: “The volumes have
changed over the years but they have been
increasing, and through investment in
the plant and staff we have doubled the
workforce over the past five years. We’re
no longer solely a container port and have
diversified into products such as forest
products, timber and paper, importing
some 80 per cent of the newsprint used by
Scottish newspapers and we also export
paper to the American market.”
The opening of the £19m cruise berthing
facility and visitor centre this year at
Greenock Ocean Terminal underlines the
growth in a business building year on year.
It is the only gateway on Scotland’s west
coast that allows deep-sea vessels to come
alongside, taking vessels of up to 345m and
draughts of 9.5m and the terminal also has
space for 60 coaches to transfer thousands
of passengers to their ship or take them
on day trips. Business has grown from 20
cruise ships in the early 2000s to almost 90
calling into Greenock this year.
Chris Kerr, head of the Marine Economy
team at law firm Harper Macleod, says:
“One of the main reasons that the scale
of this sector is often overlooked is that
it can be hard to define exactly how
broadly the definition of the marine sector
stretches. There is a vast range of interested
stakeholders, whose interests are not
always necessarily aligned – just look at
Brexit and the wildly different impact it
may have on different parts of the sector.
“It’s important that, at the highest levels
of policy and decision making, marine is
not allowed to be ‘the one that got away’.
“We look at it as part of the modern
rural economy, and it includes everything
from those hand-diving for shellfish to
pelagic fisherman, and from ports and
harbours to building or financing vessels.
Throw in aquaculture, offshore energy,
ports and harbours and the vast supply
chain and you can easily lose sight of the
sector as a whole, which is spread around
what is one of Europe’s longest coastlines.
“Of course, it’s not all rural, with a city
such as Glasgow with its maritime heritage
retaining a significant influence in areas
such as merchant shipping, training and
recruitment.”
One common theme is that the marine
sector makes use of Scotland’s natural
capital, which is increasingly being
recognised as central to our country’s
prosperity and fundamental to the
sustainability of our overall economy. ■