Austal wins UK wind turbine boat deal

Shipbuilder Austal has announced it has won a £7.4 million ($11.1 million) contract to design and construct three offshore support vessels for UK-based Turbine Transfers.

The contract is the first for Austals windfarm vessel design series which was launched in 2010.

The ships will be used to transport service crews and equipment to offshore windfarms located off the European coast.

Austal said the boats, which would be built at its Henderson shipyard, would be the first Turbine Transfers has commissioned outside the UK.

Austal chief executive Andrew Bellamy said the contract was an important step in the copmpay's ambitions of becoming a supplier to the European renewable energy market.

"Supporting the currently installed offshore generating capacity is today an attractive market opportunity, but the projected growth in new wind farms and wave generator capacity over coming years makes this market sector a strategic component of the Austal Group's commercial vessel business," Mr Bellamy said in a statement.

Mr Bellamy said Austal ahd the intellectual property in place which was needed for the new market, and that its vessels were more efficient and faster than Turbine Transfers' existing fleet.

The boats will be chartered to Turbine Transfers for an initial period of five years.

The announcement comes after Austal updated the market on its review of the Henderson operations earlier this week.

Austal said it was in the process of regionalising its manufacturing base to remain competitive in the face of the strong Australian dollar.

At close of trade today Austal's stock had slipped slightly, down 0.34 per cent to $2.95.