Plans to create 1,000 jobs at new Scottish Marine Technology Park on the Clyde have been revealed.
Glasgow-based marine engineering company Malin Group is considering a derelict site in West Dunbartonshire – one of Scotland’s unemployment blackspots – in a bid to bring marine manufacturing back to the Upper Clyde
Malin Group wants to set up a Scottish Marine Technology Park at Old Kilpatrick in West Dunbartonshire transforming the derelict 47-acre site, formerly home to the Carless oil storage facility, which suffered extensive damage during the second world war.
Unlike locations further up the Clyde, the site is land zoned for industrial use and will have direct access to a deep-water channel via an 80-metre long deep-water quayside berth with heavy lift facilities.
Malin Group managing director John MacSween said he believed the hub would be a “magnet” for marine engineering and technology organisations and “a centre of excellence” for the sector.
An economic impact assessment of the development by land development and infrastructure consultants Peter Brett Associates found the park would create 986 jobs, if fully realised, and add £125.4 million annually to West Dunbartonshire’s economy.
The construction phase of the project will also see more than 600 additional short-term jobs created.
John MacSween said: “The heritage of the Clyde is something of which we should all be rightly proud. We have been working in the shipping industry for over 100 years and have a passion for the river and its history, but there is a need to be looking to the future to ensure the long-term success of the Clyde as a maritime centre of excellence.
“There are already great examples of this in the form of what is being done at BAE Systems and at Ferguson Marine in the shipbuilding sector.
“Training and ship-management too are very well represented and the Department of Naval Architecture at Strathclyde University is a world class centre for research and learning in the marine sector.
“What we are looking to achieve at Old Kilpatrick is to complement these activities and bring other marine clients, companies and interests here.
“I believe this development will be a magnet that will draw marine organisations to it, and that it will ultimately become a centre of excellence for the sector.”
The development, which is in an advanced stage of planning with West Dunbartonshire Council, will see a £10 million remediation and regeneration of the contaminated land that is a legacy of the past oil refinery.
