Belfast shipbuilder Harland & Wolff has a secured a deal to deliver new barges for the River Thames.

The iconic Northern Ireland company was awarded a second contract worth approximately £9.6 million by Riverside Energy Park Limited, part of the Cory Group of companies for the fabrication of 12 barges. This additional contract follows on from the original Cory contract announced on 01 June. 

The barges will be used to transport recyclable and non-recyclable waste on the River Thames. The contract award is subject to Cory reaching financial close on its Riverside 2 development, which will include an Energy from Waste (EfW) facility that will be adjacent to Cory's existing EfW facility and will be one of the largest and most efficient in the UK.  

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Fabrication will again take place at Harland & Wolff's Belfast site, beginning towards the end of the fabrication programme for the first set of 11 barges. A production line has been set up at the Belfast facility that will provide seamless delivery of the twenty-three barges in total. Revenues from this additional contract are expected to be delivered in 2023, further underpinning the Group's contracted revenues for that year, which now sit at c£40 million.

Harland & Wolff, Group CEO John Wood, commented: "We are pleased that Cory has once again chosen Harland & Wolff to fabricate these new barges. Fabrication facilities require a constant stream of work in order to create economies of scale and derive operational efficiencies. We have set up a semi-automated production line for the first Cory contract and with the award of the second contract, we will be able to drive through further efficiencies in the fabrication process."