Blow for Belfast shipbuilding as Harland & Wolff goes bust

Harland & Wolff, the owner of the Belfast shipyard that built the Titanic, is to enter into administration this week after failing to find new funding, in a blow to UK government hopes of shipbuilding in the city.

- Jasper Jolly

The company said it was insolvent and was expecting to appoint administrators from Teneo imminently.

It said an unspecified number of redundancies at the listed holding company, Harland & Wolff Group, were inevitable, but that it was hopeful the companies operating its shipyards would be bought. Those core operations would "continue to trade as usual" for now, it added.

In July the company said as many as 1,600 people were working across its businesses, which also included shipyards in Devon and Scotland, a proposed gas storage operation in Northern Ireland, and a now discontinued ferry service serving the Isles of Scilly.

It is the latest in a long line of crises for the Belfast yards, which have declined from their heyday when they employed as many as 20,000 people. The city's skyline is still dominated by the twin yellow Samson and Goliath cranes, which were installed in the 1970s.