Canada: Seaspan’s North Vancouver Shipyard Starts $200M Upgrade

October 22, 2012

Seaspan’s North Vancouver shipyard will see a major redevelopment having kick-started a $200-million upgrade at a groundbreaking ceremony on Friday, the Vancouver Sun writes. The costly make over will include completion of four new fabrication buildings, a shipbuilding gantry crane, and a load-out pier, all with one goal, namely to facilitate implementation of an $8 billion endeavor entrusted to the shipyard by the Canadian Coast Guard and Royal Canadian Navy.

The contract assigned through the National Shipbuilding Procurement Strategy (NSPS) underlies construction of up to seven non-combat vessels.

These are: three offshore fisheries science vessels, one offshore oceanographic science vessel, one polar icebreaker, and two joint support ships.

“The beginning of construction at our shipyard marks the rebirth of a once thriving shipbuilding business on the BC Coast. Not only are we building a world-class shipyard in North Vancouver, we’re looking forward to revitalizing the ship construction business and to training and growing our workforce by an additional 1000 employees over the next three years. We are committed to completing the facilities upgrades as proposed in our original NSPS bid by 2015,” Seaspan CEO Jonathan Whitworth stated on the occasion.

Activities on designing the vessels are already underway and the first keel for one of the smaller ships is expected to be laid already in 2013.

[mappress]
Shipbuilding Tribune Staff, October 22, 2012; Image: Seaspan