Seven share £91m Navy carriers work

1:56pm Saturday 5th July 2008

Seven firms have won contracts worth £91 million as part of work on two giant aircraft carriers for the Royal Navy.

Corus, based in Scunthorpe, will produce steel for the vessels in a £65 million deal.

MacTaggart Scott and Co Ltd in Mid Lothian will be paid £13 million to make aircraft lifts, and Aeronautical and General Instruments Ltd in Poole £7.5 million for visual aids.

Three contracts worth £1 million each have been award to Salt Separation Services Limited in Rochdale for water production systems, New Malden-based Northrop Grumman Sperry Marine BV for navigation apparatus and Tex Special Products Limited in Ipswich for flying co-ordination equipment.

Brand Rex Limited in Leigh, Lancashire will provide fibre optics for £3 million.

Work on HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales, the biggest and most powerful surface warships ever made in the UK, will create or sustain 10,000 jobs, according to the MoD.

The 65,000-ton carriers, which will carry a crew of about 1,500 and up to 40 aircraft, will enter service in 2014 and 2016.

Contracts for the work, signed at a ceremony last Thursday on the HMS Ark Royal in Portsmouth, are worth a total of £4 billion.

The carriers will be built at shipyards Portsmouth, Barrow-in-Furness, Govan and Rosyth, with much of the work carried out by BVT Surface Fleet, a newly-formed consortium of BAE Systems and VT Group.

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