Scrap turns into gold for yard

By Arthur Strain
BBC News

She came to Belfast last August in the midst of one of the biggest news stories of the year, but now the front section of the MSC Napoli is two weeks away from the smelters'.

The firm that built the Titanic - Harland and Wolff - landed the task of dismantling the cargo ship, which had to be beached on the Devon coast.

At the time there were incredible scenes of people rushing to the beach to take advantage of the unexpected bounty of the sea, in the shape of containers of motorcycles and other goods washed ashore.

The Belfast shipyard became one of the benefactors of the sad destruction of the ocean-going behemoth, keeping 80 pairs of hands busy at the yard.

It has been an interesting assignment for the crews, an estimated five cubic tonnes of waste oil needing removal became an actual 100 tonnes, adding to the workload of staff.

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Now the cutting up of the superstructure is nearing completion and is expected to end up leaving 60,000 tonnes of ship-building grade steel, with the exception of one piece that was auctioned off for the BBC's Children in Need charity.

Engineers have described it as building a ship in reverse, but the company was glad to get such a lucrative contract.

Company spokesman Joris Minne said that the dry-dock the Napoli was being broken up in was needed for another project, one which the shipbuilder is taking on more and more.

The yard has moved from exclusively shipbuilding into design engineering, renewables, repairs and conversions, among others.

It is a huge change from the turn of the millennium when the yard was staring at disaster - with empty order books the 1,745 strong workforce was put on notice and its future was in doubt.

Now, it still employs 500 people working across a variety of diverse projects.

Most recently it assembled an undersea turbine to be placed in Strangford Lough to generate power from tidal currents.

When the Napoli contract ends it will be replaced with one for 60 off-shore wind farms, to be placed off the south west coast of Scotland.

"There have been very, very hard times especially five or six years ago," Mr Minne said.

"Since then, because it has diversified, we can compete for different projects and it now has a secure and very decent future," he said.

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