Cammell Laird’s Leander Frigate generates global interest

A CGI of the Type31e Leander Frigate

Birkenhead-based ship builder Cammell Laird is in talks with several prospective international customers interested in the T31 Leander class Frigate.

The business believes the low price point of £250m per vessel and proven technology makes the Type 31e extremely attractive to the international market.

The Ministry of Defence took its first steps to re-opening competition for the frigate shipbuilding contracts and Cammell Laird is now using that momentum to demonstrate its global exportability.

The yard’s Leander project team expects excitement to heighten when BAE Systems promotes the ship at two overseas conferences in the coming months.

It will exhibit the Leander proposal at the Euronaval conference in Paris in October and Exponaval, which takes place in Chile in December.

Cammell Laird will be at Euronaval to showcase its warship-building capabilities.

Tony Graham, Cammell Laird Leander project director, said Team Leander was in discussions with several important international customers about the exportability of Leander.

He said: “This is a warship that has been designed to UK standards using the latest thinking, built in the UK, using a UK combat system.

“We’re going to be producing these ships at a price that has never been made available before on the international market so, understandably, the Leander is generating a lot of interest.”

The ship builder recently announced its supply chain database had exceeded 2,000 suppliers since the Ministry of Defence announced the contract competition in September 2017 as part of the UK’s new National Shipbuilding Strategy.

More than 300 have already been cleared to support the company’s UK MoD bids and the business is inviting other suppliers to join the project in preparation for the T31e programme.

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