NZET Committee Letter: Update on New Vessels for Islay & Little Minch

Kevin Hobbs, Chief Executive Officer of Caledonian Maritime Assets Limited, sent this letter to Edward Mountain, Convenor of the Scottish Parliament’s Net Zero, Energy & Transport Committee on 28 February 2025

Dear Mr Mountain,

Update on New Vessels for Islay & Little Minch. MV Isle of Islay (NB1092), MV Loch Indaal (NB1093), MV Lochmor (NB1100) and MV Claymore (NB1101)

We would like to provide you with an interim update regarding the vessels being built at Cemre Shipyard, Türkiye.

We have a permanent site team based in Türkiye and our Director of Vessels has been on site for five weeks thus far in 2025.

You will recall that our advice to you in early December 2024 was a delivery date at end of Q1 2025.

All parties involved in the project are working very hard to deliver the vessel. You are aware of the challenges in the past two years (Ukraine, Earthquake and Red Sea incursions) and there is very little that can be done regarding global geopolitical events.

CMAL, our site team, CalMac, the shipyard and Class/Flag are all acutely aware of the need to deliver the vessels and remain fully focussed on delivery of the MV Isle of Islay, followed by the next three vessels (MV Loch Indaal, MV Lochmor and MV Claymore).

We are closely monitoring progress and working with Cemre to determine when the first vessel will be delivered. We are facing serious issues with labour, particularly the availability of specialist commissioning sub-contractors. This continues to set the project and delivery back. To put this in context, the shipyard builds the vessel and installs the machinery, but all manufacturers require their own specialists to commission the systems to ensure warranties are secured. The lack of commissioning engineers is an issue affecting the global shipbuilding industry, and is causing months-long delays in some cases.

We planned to dock the vessel in early February 2025 to check underwater parts and apply the underwater paint systems. However, this has been delayed until early March 2025 due to the cold weather and snow, which has delayed the vessel that is currently utilising the dock. We are also unable to apply the underwater paint system in freezing conditions or whilst snow is falling, because this compromises the quality of the paint, so we must wait for better weather conditions to carry out this work. We currently anticipate the docking work to be completed by mid-March, conditions allowing.

We anticipate the vessel will be ready for sea trials in late April or early May 2025 at the earliest, provided commissioning and outfitting activities go smoothly and nothing untoward is discovered at the docking stage. We expect sea trials to take approximately one week, again on the proviso that all installed machinery and systems operate as expected.

Based on our recent experience of the MV Glen Sannox approvals ahead of entering service, we expect delivery of MV Isle of Islay between six and 10 weeks after sea trials. This is assuming there are no issues with Maritime and Coastguard Agency and Lloyds Register certification.

Taking all the above into consideration, we anticipate delivery of the MV Isle of Islay no earlier than the end of Q2 2025.

With regard to MV Loch Indaal, MV Lochmor and MV Claymore, we expect these vessels to follow a delivery schedule of six-month intervals from the delivery of MV Isle of Islay. The contract has anticipated intervals of four months, but it is prudent we take our current understanding of the situation into consideration.

However, it is difficult to judge this exactly, as there are currently three other vessels being completed at Cemre for other operators, and their completion may release resource within the yard which would accelerate progress on our vessels.

We fully appreciate this is not the news the island communities, or indeed anyone wants to hear. However, we endeavour to be as transparent as possible regarding what can be achieved, and this letter reflects our latest observations. We are focussed on ensuring each vessel is of the highest quality so that we can have confidence in their ability to operate successfully on the network and be both resilient and give the end users a high-quality experience.

We will send you the quarterly update at the end of March 2025 as agreed.