The cream of our industry, or skimmed MILC?
We went to the launch of the UK government’s strategic framework for the marine industry – under the Marine Industries Leadership Council, or MILC - looking forward to some good news.
After all, it came just in advance of our 90th birthday, and even though The Motorship is now very much an international magazine, its first issues trumpeted the achievements and strength of British shipbuilding and marine engineering. So we were hoping to be able to say that, 90 years on, there were prospects on the horizon of renewed greatness for our industry.
According to the brochures, one of the driving forces behind the initiative was to compete with not only other European maritime countries, but also to avoid losing out to the emerging nations – China, India and Brazil each being singled out for a mention.
To find an example of a national marine industry where each part feeds off the other for the benefit of the whole, we cannot do better than look at the Norwegian maritime cluster.
The proposed UK strategic partnership looks like a pale shadow of the Norwegian example. It contains some important and thriving elements of the maritime community: notably the coastal leisure boating industry and naval shipbuilding. Also marine renewables – the government is, rightly, investing heavily in wave energy. But that looked like it.
How could Norway have a maritime cluster without shipping, ports, oil and gas? Yet that is what is being created in the UK. To be fair, widening the grasp hasn’t been ruled out for the future. “This is a template and a starting point – nothing need be excluded,” said minister Ian Lucas at the launch.
But to our eyes, admittedly biased towards merchant shipping and commercial marine engineering, it all seems too tentative, too safe. The favourite bits of the marine industry are the big employers, the BAE Systems, and the big earners, like the motor yacht exporters, so we can see why the government likes them. Yet in the UK we have countless smaller companies, some very small, but still offering world-leading technology. Not so much promising the UK a prominent place in the future, more a case of being right out there in front, right now. They are missing from the plans, and were missing from the launch event. But they, arguably more than anybody, deserve to be recognised, supported and rewarded.
Maybe Robert Hill of safety group Chemring (one of the few marine equipment companies that is playing a part in the initiative) gave a clue when he explained that one of the difficulties in setting up the framework has been getting the message across to the industry as a whole of the benefits of working together. Maybe the merchant shipping and marine equipment and engineering sectors just aren’t interested, or haven’t been persuaded.
To us, it’s all a bit half hearted. It could, and should, have been a bold, all encompassing event. It’s promising, certainly. But will it unite the UK marine industry into a whole that is even stronger than its impressive parts? Or will it turn out to be little more than a self-serving exercise for the industry associations? The jury is certainly out on that.
The associated news story can be found here.
