Securing the last part of the freehold in September this year means that Penzance Dry Dock is now back in Cornish hands for the first time since 1996. Linked Solutions is now the 100% owner of the freehold.
The entire site is undergoing a major refit…
The office block is having new roofs, new drainage systems, heating and double glazing. The offices are being reshuffled to incorporate a large project office, a CAD drawing office, new breakrooms with an onsite Café for the workforce and an apprenticeship suite will be fitted out.
There will be pilling across the entire site, which will improve the ground conditions across the site which is all made land.
The Dry Dock gates will be overhauled, stripped back to bare metal and repainted, hinges will be rebuilt, and sluices, external wheels and all sealing surfaces will be replaced.
The pump system and pump room has been decommissioned, new pumps, electrical supplies and controls, pipework and valves have all been fitted, this has reduced the pumping out time to around one hour, previously it would take around 6 hours, and the pump room would flood every spring tide.
The carpenter’s workshop is being replaced with a brand-new building. This will incorporate new staff toilets and showers, and a new ‘clean room’ for conducting engine and gearbox overhauls. There will be new concrete floors across the entire site.
The workshops will become fully enclosed with rollers doors to reduce our noise signature and create enclosed environments for our works. There will be a site wide air ring main fitted, enabling the move from electric tools to air tools.
The machine shop will be completely overhauled, with the introduction of CNC profiling machines.
There will also be seven new cranes. Inside the workshops will be five gantry cranes spread across two assembly bays, the largest of the two will be 65m long and more than 12m wide with 20T lift capacity across the entire assembly bay. A 10T Jib crane will be in the place of the old toilet block, this will service the tidal berth in abbey basin, for barges, and workboats. We will also be able to lift out smaller vessels here and move into the workshops. The final will be a 50T Goliath crane, this will stand 20M over the Dry Dock to prevent our air draft of vessels being restricted, this crane will also minimise the use of mobile cranes and will be able to accommodate ship building here at Penzance Dry Dock.
Thanks to this refit, we will be the only shipyard in the country, in our size of market that can accommodate both ship building and ship repair side by side. This will attract more industry and employment to the area while protecting the future of our industry here in West Cornwall.
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