Austal Secures US Navy Vessel Maintenance Work

Demon­strat­ing its grow­ing pres­ence in the defence and ves­sel sup­port mar­kets, Austal’s US oper­a­tion has been award­ed a sub­con­tract by BAE Sys­tems to pro­vide struc­tur­al main­te­nance ser­vices for “Sea Fight­er” (FSF‑1), a US Navy Research Ves­sel which is used for advanced tech­nol­o­gy demon­stra­tions.

The ves­sel is a 79.9 metre high-speed alu­mini­um cata­ma­ran, designed to oper­ate at speeds in excess of 50 knots. It is oper­at­ed by Great East­ern Group for the Office of Naval Research. 

Austal’s Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer, Andrew Bel­lamy, said the con­tract was in line with key com­pa­ny strate­gies to expand its defence and ves­sel sup­port businesses. 

“This con­tract is fur­ther recog­ni­tion from the defence com­mu­ni­ty that our core skills add val­ue in the in-ser­vice sup­port phase. It shows we can suc­cess­ful­ly grow our inter­na­tion­al sup­port busi­ness, and lever­age our defence con­tract­ing cre­den­tials beyond new ship con­struc­tion, in line with our strat­e­gy,” he said. 

Austal cur­rent­ly pro­vides in-ser­vice sup­port to defence ves­sels in Aus­tralia, Oman, Trinidad and Toba­go and the Unit­ed States. 

“We are very pleased to be team­ing with the pro­fes­sion­als from Austal. The abil­i­ty to har­ness the strengths of both com­pa­nies in a coop­er­a­tive effort will be fun­da­men­tal to secur­ing future oppor­tu­ni­ties,” said Vic Rhoad­es, direc­tor and gen­er­al man­ag­er of BAE Sys­tems South­east Ship­yards Alabama. 

Joe Rel­la, Pres­i­dent and Chief Oper­at­ing Offi­cer of Austal USA said, “We are excit­ed to work with our neigh­bours at BAE Sys­tems and bring more busi­ness to Mobile, Alabama.” 

Austal’s con­tract val­ue is approx­i­mate­ly US$1.5 mil­lion dol­lars, and work is expect­ed to extend into the first quar­ter of 2012. 

Ear­li­er this week Austal’s US oper­a­tion held a keel-lay­ing cer­e­mo­ny for the sec­ond of sev­en 103 metre Joint High Speed Ves­sels it is con­tract­ed to design and build for the US Navy. It is also prepar­ing to launch its sec­ond Inde­pen­dence-vari­ant 127 metre Lit­toral Com­bat Ship (LCS), also for the US Navy. 

Fur­ther Infor­ma­tion
Con­tact:
Austal
Phone: 61 8 9410 1111
Fax: 61 8 9410 2564
Email: pubrel@austal.com

Source:
Austal

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