The Navy's Alfeite Shipyard Will Be Run by a Joint Venture With Italy's Fincantieri, and the Government Promises No Job Losses

The Arsenal do Alfeite, the Portuguese Navy's shipyard on the south bank of the Tagus, is to be run by a joint venture between the state defence holding company idD Portugal Defence and the Italian shipbuilder Fincantieri, the Ministry of Defence announced on Wednesday. The government promised that "not a single job" would be lost.

The announcement came in a note addressed to the yard's workers and sent to the press, after the defence minister, Nuno Melo, met the company's board and its workers' committee on Wednesday, the Lusa news agency reported, in a text carried by Observador.

Tied to the frigate deal

The partnership grows out of Portugal's purchase of three new-generation frigates from Fincantieri, financed through the European Union's SAFE defence loans, a deal that includes investment in the Alfeite yard. The shipyard, which belongs to the Navy, has been in serious financial difficulty for years.

According to the government, the joint venture will be responsible for "carrying out the revitalisation, executing the investment and building the yard's capacity", as well as training and qualifying its staff and then operating the yard "under a sub-concession from the state". The move from the current company, Arsenal do Alfeite, S.A., to the new model will take "approximately one year".

"Not a single job"

"Not a single job will be given up. This revitalisation is structured to protect the workers," the ministry's note says, adding that the knowledge, experience and skills already in the yard "are factors that justify the investment". The government says the partnership will bring "investment, more technology, greater industrial capacity and more opportunities for specialised qualification and training".

The Navy will remain the yard's priority client, and maintaining and keeping its ships ready for operations will stay "the central core" of the work done there. The ministry argued that the fleet is "in a full cycle of transformation", taking on newer and more technologically demanding ships that need new maintenance skills, infrastructure and more dock space. "We want the maintenance of these new naval assets to remain in Portugal and to continue to be carried out at this shipyard. For that to be possible, the productive capacity of the Arsenal has to increase," the note says.

Fincantieri had already said, in answers to Lusa last December, that it was willing to make "significant investments" in the Alfeite yard and to involve Portuguese shipyards and companies in building the ships.

What is still unknown

The note does not give the size of the investment, the shares each partner will hold in the joint venture, or the terms of the sub-concession. Those details will matter to the yard's workforce and to the towns around it on the south bank, and to how much of the frigate programme's work actually stays in Portugal.