UK Dock’s Teeside yard enjoys record-breaking year in 2023

The Teeside shipyard of east coast-based shiprepairer UK Docks Marine Services recorded a record year in 2023 for the repair, maintenance and service both naval and commercial vessels.

More than 30 vessels were handled at the Middlesbrough yard in the past 12 months in its two graving docks and heavy lift repair quay, nearly all for UK owners and operators.

Among the vessels repaired during 2023 were the Royal Navy’s only icebreaker – HMS Protector – and the former Royal Fleet Auxiliary Landing Ship Logistics (LSL) RFA Sir Tristram, now used as a training vessel for the UK’s Special Forces in counter terrorism operations in the south coast UK port of Portland.

Meanwhile, two unusual visitors to the Teeside yard were Transport for London’s two passenger/vehicle double ender ferries, Dame Vera Lynn and Ben Woollacott, which operate the Woolwich Free Ferry service across the River Thames in London. The two ferries, which operate on the very short route between Woolwich and North Woolwich, drydocked at the yard for their first 5 Year Special Surveys since being delivered from Poland’s Remontowa Shipbuilding, in Gdansk.

Other notable commercial visitors to the yard during the year were the Trinity House lights/buoy tender Patricia, the trailing suction hopper dredger UKD Marlin and various OSVs owned by the two UK offshore operator’s North Star Shipping and Putford Offshore, along with a number of ship-handling tugs from the fleet of Svitzer.

The Royal Navy’s Antarctic support vessel HMS Protector visited the Teeside yard twice during 2023, once for a comprehensive drydocking package and then again later in the year to carry out essential repairs to its main engine and drivetrain, which h required more than 300 individual work packages being undertaken on time and on budget.

UK Docks is currently in the middle of a ten-year GBP 150 million through life support contract for work on HMS Protector and the two Royal Navy survey vessel HMS Echo and HMS Enterprise. This contract, signed in 2018, was awarded by the UK’s Ministry of Defence (MOD).

Meanwhile, in May last year, UK Docks was awarded a further MOD contract, this time valued at GBP 250 million, for the through life support of the Royal Navy’s five Offshore Patrol Vessels (OPV) – HMS Forth, HMS Medway, HMS Spey, HMS Tamar and HMS Trent. This contract lasts through to 2031.

Two of these vessels operate in the South Atlantic, and are based in the Falkland Islands, while the other three operate in the Asia/Pacific region. UK Docks has a permanent repair base in Mare Harbour, in the Falklands.

UK Docks reopened the Teesside facility in 2014, after it had lain derelict for more than 20 years.