Lowestoft tug firm's �75m deal extended
BRITAIN'S Maritime and Coastguard Agency has extended a �75m eight-year contract with Lowestoft's Klyne Tugs until 2011.The deal to provide emergency salvage and towing operations around the UK coast began in 2001 and was due to expire this year, but the agency has taken up an option to extend the contract by two years.
BRITAIN'S Maritime and Coastguard Agency has extended a �75m eight-year contract with Lowestoft's Klyne Tugs until 2011.
The deal to provide emergency salvage and towing operations around the UK coast began in 2001 and was due to expire this year, but the agency has taken up an option to extend the contract by two years.
Four of Klyne's fleet of five vessels are on call all year round under the deal.
Earlier this week, Klyne's fifth vessel, the Anglian Earl, brought the French aircraft carrier Clemenceau from Brest in Brittany to Teesside.
The asbestos-contaminated carrier had been turned away from India, Turkey and Greece and will now be decommissioned under licence by Able UK at the Graythorp Dock in Hartlepool.
Towing the Clemenceau is the latest in a series of high profile operations by the firm, which was also called into action after the MSC Napoli grounded off the Devon coast in January 2007, spilling 50 freight containers onto Branscombe beach.
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Yesterday, Klyne Tugs managing director Carl Beare, said he expected the firm to be 'slightly up' on its �15m turnover in recent years and that the firm had maintained its reputation as a leading player in the UK's towing and salvage industry.
'The coastguard contract occupies four of our vessels 365 days of the year,' Mr Beare added. 'It's a prestigious contract and we're proud to have it.'
Klyne employs 11 people onshore and 117 people at sea, including nine cadets. Mr Beare said that the firm's operation had 'continued as normal' since Klyne's takeover by JP Knight, Britain's oldest tug barge company, in December 2007.
