New owner to make Malta yard credible
The shipyard facilities of the former Malta Drydocks were recently handed over to the new Italian owners
The new Italian owners of the Cospicua ship repair facility, formerly know as Malta Drydocks, expect to see ‘tranquillity’ and ‘flexibility’ if the yard's international credibility were to be restored.
Antonio Palumbo, managing director of Palumbo Spa, said the company would seek to employ Maltese workers but refrained from saying how many. It was finance minister Tonio Fenech who said the company was initially expected to recruit about 100 people.
Palumbo said the company had to turn a new page and this would only be possible if everybody pulled together. Hundreds of former shipyard workers have applied for jobs with the Italian company.
The Malta facility is Palumbo’s latest major development in its 40 year history. The Italian ship repair company owns two facilities, one in Naples and another in Messina, but both are small-scale operations when compared to the capacity offered by the Cospicua dockyard.
Palumbo said the facilities at Naples and Messina are limited and he wanted to strengthen the company’s portfolio by coming to Malta. He explained that the ship repair facilities in Malta were a “dream” for anybody in the industry who knew the potential they offered. “We come here with a sense of responsibility. We know the history of the yard and that it also had a difficult past but we want to turn a new page and make it credible again,” Palumbo said.
Equipment at the empty shipyard is being maintained regularly by an emergency team of about 40 employees, contracted on a weekly basis.
Parliament last week approved the transfer of the facility to Palumbo on a 30-year lease. The company will pay government €90 million over the span of the lease, which, at a discounted rate to take account of inflation, will amount to just over €50 million if paid today. The new owner is also expected to invest some €30 million of which €23.5 million will be spent in the first five years of operation.Images for this article - click to enlarge
Unless otherwise stated, all images copyright © Mercator Media 2012. This does not exclude the owner's assertion of copyright over the material.
