THE Forgacs shipyard at Tomago is set to become a hive of activity under new owners Civmec, who are modelling the business on their main heavy engineering and ship-building site at Henderson in Western Australia.
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The Perth-based company recently bought the Forgacs name and the company’s Tomago shipyard in a deal valued at $20.75 million.
Civmec is hoping to win a share of the fabrication work for the $50-billion submarine contract announced this week, and will investigate doing some of it in Newcastle.
Civmec will also pursue work on two other big naval contracts – the offshore patrol boats and the future frigates – and is confident of winning construction contracts for the Sydney market, with work, including concrete casting, to be done at Tomago.
Founded in 1962 by a Hungarian emigre, the late Stephen Forgacs, the Forgacs group grew to become one of the most successful “second tier” naval contractors in Australia.
Mr Forgacs died in 2012 and his family put the business up for sale just as it finished a seven-year stint building hull modules for the navy’s air warfare destroyers being assembled in South Australia.
Civmec’s chief executive, Pat Tallon, has been in Newcastle along with the company’s recently recruited general manager of defence, former naval submarine commander Mike Deeks.
They said Civmec was determined to revive Newcastle’s fortunes as a ship-building and ship-repair port. Civmec would use the Forgacs brand for all of its defence work.
Mr Tallon said Civmec was proud to be an Australian manufacturer at a time when others were saying it was “too hard” or “too expensive” to make things in Australia.
“We set up in Henderson when everyone was pulling out of fabrication and large projects were going offshore,” he said. “Labour might be more expensive in Australia but with proper supervision, the Australian workforce is a very efficient workforce. The amount of re-work is minimal, the client can come and see and touch and feel the work, rather than relying on reports back from offshore.
“Don’t get me wrong: there’s a lot of good work done overseas, but there’s a lot that doesn’t get finished to requirement and has to be worked on again at remote sites where the labour is much more expensive.”
Mr Tallon said Civmec aimed to be “a one-stop shop” for customers, so that every aspect of a contract from site works and training through to heavy engineering, fabrication and maintenance was handled under the one roof.
Civmec was serious about bidding for the submarines and had recently built a submarine hull section from scratch, and within specifications, in just four weeks to show it could be done.
Mr Deeks retired from defence in 2005 after 32 years of service. He said he was impressed at the complex work that Civmec had done, including massive sub-sea suction piles for Shell’s Prelude floating liquified natural gas plant, 200 kilometres off the northern WA coast.
