Cash splash for shipyard
Firms eye locations for facility
ENGINEERING consultants have scoped out the Cairns marine precinct for ideal locations and costings to build a new shared facility with a 3000-tonne syncrolift.
Representatives from Norship Marine, Tropical Reef Shipyard and BSE Cairns Slipways yesterday outlined their own upgrade plans after receiving $8 million apiece in Federal Government funding.
Ports North chairman Russell Beer stressed the work — including new wharf construction, slipway extensions, hardstand resurfacing and other upgrades — was just the beginning.
He said the State Government’s plan to dredge Trinity Inlet, coupled with the Federal Government’s earmarked $24 million common user facility, would be a game changer for the Far North’s ship maintenance industry.
Plans are already underway to use 100,000 tonnes of stiff clay dredge spoil as landfill for future marine industry development at Tingira St in Portsmith.
Mr Beer said the common user facility would likely be situated much closer to the slipways.
“That (dredge spoil plan) is looking at surcharging the land for future development — not in the next couple of years,” he said.
“The syncrolift site, logically, would be closer to the location of the existing shipyards.
“Once you get that, the extra industry that comes there will need other industrial land around it. The land at the end of Tingira St will be used for that sort of work.”
Norship Marine business development manager Graham Wharton said the business already handled the vast majority of Defence patrol boat repair and maintenance work in Australia.
“We will do all the classes of patrol boat. We currently have seven there at the moment that we’re working on,” he said.
But a bigger class of vessel is on the way and new infrastructure and machinery is necessary if Cairns is to compete for the contracts.
Leichhardt MP Warren Entsch said the maintenance work would go on for decades.
“Once those vessels are built, they need to be continually sustained,” he said.
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