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New era for ship design in the North East

A new era for North East ship design has been revealed as the Minister of State for Defence Equipment and Support, Lord Drayson, officially unveiled the new £2.3 million Marine Design Centre in Newcastle upon Tyne.

In an address to an invited audience of more than 100 senior representatives from the marine industry last week, Lord Drayson said: “This is a tremendous achievement and I want to pay tribute to NDI and One NorthEast, not only for having the vision to commission this centre, but to get it done in just 12 short months. It is more than just the building here – it is about the network of experts. It’s a fantastic model for the future.

“The Marine Design Centre deserves to succeed; I am confident that it will do so, and I am certain that it will make a significant contribution to the economic well-being of the North East.”

The Marine Design Centre – located at Central Square South in central Newcastle and the first of its kind in the UK - has been set up as a subsidiary business of Northern Defence Industries (NDI), to which around 200 regional companies are affiliated.

In his welcome speech, NDI Group Managing Director Trevor Harrison said: “For more than two hundred years the North East of England has been at the forefront of marine engineering innovation. The Marine Design Centre’s mission is to further develop that fine tradition and to ensure that our regional marine design companies continue to create revolutionary new concepts and deliver ground-breaking, innovative ideas from drawing-board to point of construction.

“We may no longer build ships here - but we still have the skills and the talents to design the ships of the future.”

Regional Development Agency One NorthEast has partnered with NDI in the creation of the Marine Design Centre, and has provided £1.5 million in initial funding for the project.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .