Titanic shipyard wins Cunard and P&O cruise liner contracts
The Belfast shipyard which built the Titanic has won maintenance contracts from Cunard and P&O Cruises.
Harland & Wolff will work on Cunard’s Queen Victoria and P&O’s Aurora at its dry dock in Belfast.
Queen Victoria will undergo works in May while Aurora will occupy the dock in June – the first time liners have been inside the Belfast dry docks for more than two decades.
Winning the contracts marks a turnaround for Harland & Wolff which fell into administration in 2019. The shipyard was spared when Infrastrata swooped in and picked up the firm for £6m. An estimated £1bn of taxpayer money has also been poured into the company.
“When acquiring the assets of Harland and Wolff in December 2019 and in a pre-pandemic period, the cruise industry was one of our key target markets,” commented group chief executive John Wood.
Harland & Wolff was founded in 1861 by Edward Harland and his business partner Gustav Wolff. Between 1909 and 1914 the company built the infamous Titanic as well as Britannic and Olympic.
During the second world war the shipyard built six aircraft carriers, 130 naval ships and repaired over 22,000 vessels, employing a workforce of 35,000.
The firm was nationalised in the 1950s amid a decline of travelling by sea. It was returned to the private sector in 1989 by Norwegian shipping magnate Fred Olsen.
Read more: P&O Cruises cancels all sailings until early next year