The British shipbuilding company Harland & Wolff will file an application for the initiation of proceedings bankruptcy and to be admitted to receivership. In a communication to the London Stock Exchange, today the property of the shipbuilding company explained that following the impossibility of obtaining a line of financing after the rejection of the application for a credit line of £200 million, on which the government has refused to grant The State guarantee ( of 22 July 2024), Harland & Wolff received from Riverstone Credit Partners, the company's current lender, additional funds $25 million that is used to support the activity of the company, which is currently in negotiations with different parties to secure financing Temporary. Specifying that recently the funding obtained have been used more and more to cover supplies and that some customers have raised concerns about the fact that portions of funding may have been used to finance other activities of the group, The company said that this in turn led to the suspension of payments in progress.

In light of the difficult situation, the Board of Directors Harland & Wolff's management has redefined priorities in order to safeguard the group's core business. Was therefore decided to end the ferry service with the Isles of Scilly returning the ferry used for chartering to the lessor service and to place the Scilly Ferries branch in the next few days in liquidation due to insolvency, as well as to sell in the short term Marine Services segment as negotiations are underway with different stakeholders. The sale of the activities in the United States, while the Group's activities in Australia they are currently inactive. Other activities of the that do not generate revenue are in the process of being closed and the existing contracts have been terminated.

As for the group's core business, Harland & Wolff has made I note that with regard to the historic Belfast shipyard the company has discussed with the Spanish Navantia the terms of a plan to allow the resumption of work for the implementation of the phases programme for the construction of three ships for the Fleet Solid Support (FSS) programme of the British Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA), while activities continue on the construction site shipyards of Appledore as well as in the Scottish shipyards of Arnish and Methil.

In addition, Harland & Wolff announced that they have been taken over by Measures to reduce the number of Group personnel in areas support and in some support activities by resorting to redundancies, measures that do not concern the personnel of the Group's shipyards and which have been communicated to the today to employees. The company has specified that it is not excluded a possible further reduction in staff.

Objective of the group's restructuring plan, defined in Rothschilds & Co.'s advice is to maintain in function the core activities focused on the four construction sites naval objectives of the group, an objective to achieve which - specified Harland & Wolff - there is a need for a important funding to overcome current commercial challenges and therefore of a stable financial framework guaranteed by a new investor or a buyer of the assets.

Commenting on the company's announcement, Matt Roberts, Head of national union GMB, highlighted that all four shipyards of the group are essential to ensure the capacity in sectors such as renewable energy and shipbuilding: "The government - said Roberts - must now intervene so that no private company is authorized to choose which parts to keep, i.e. which construction sites naval or which contracts to save. Leave these essentials shipyards, as well as the crucial FSS contract with all his promises to the shipbuilding industry in the United Kingdom, At the mercy of the market - he underlined - is not a good thing. The government must provide support and oversight to conduct the market to the solution we need."

The closing of Harland & Wolff's doors was already was averted in 2019 when the company, then in receivership, had been acquired by the London-based InfraStrata ( of 1 October 2019).