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Sein

Thursday: Clouds and sun
High 15°C, low 7°C.

NEWS photo Mike Wakefield

ALLIED SHIPYARD welder Dennis Eakins inspects the first cut of steel plate for a 600-passenger ferry Allied will build for BC
Ferries. The $19.6 million contract — $1.6 million more than earlier announced — will create 160 jobs, most of them locally.

Contract part
of 10-year BC

Ferries plan

NORTH VANCOU-
VER’s Allied
Shipbuilders Ltd., whose
ship repair business has
eclipsed its shipbuilding
contracts in recent years,
has received a $19.6 mil-
lion job to build a 100-car
vessel for BC Ferries.

By lan Noble
News Reporter

PREMIER MIKE Harcourt had good news for Allied Shipbuilding

employees and industry workers Tuesday.

The contract means 160
more jobs will be created in the B.C. shipbuilding
industry, said B.C. Premier Mike Harcourt
Tuesday morming before an appreciative audience
of shipyard workers in an Allied fabrication shed.

The niajority of new jobs will be ereated at the
North Vancouver shipyard. Harcourt cheered
workers ~~ who had been exhorted by their com-
pany to “be happy!" — with a promise that the
new ferry is just the beginning ofa [O-year, $840-
million BC Ferries invesunent plan,

Sounding hike a leader tacing an election call,

Harcourt suid, “My government is committed to
the revitalization of the shipbuilding industry.”

Allied welder George Chobotar welcomed the
stability the contact brings to the yard, which
employs 100 workers year-round at its 1Q-acre
site east of the Second Narrows bridge.

“It will be nice to work on clean steel for a
change.” Chobotar said, noting much repair work
includes sandblasting and painting.

Allied contracts manager Malcolm MeLaret
said the BC Ferries vessel will be dhe biggest built

at Allied in the past decade.

Although no foreign bids for the
work were accepted, McLaren said
he’s confident Allied’s bid would
have been competitive with other
shipbuilders in Western countries.

However, he added matching bids
from countries such as Korea, with its
Jow labor costs, would have been dif-
ficult.

Utilitarian Cemtury Class: vessels
will transport 100 cars and 600 pas-
sengers On Short, heavily used routes
such as Campbell River-Quadra
island, Swartz, Bay-Salt Spring Island
and Horseshoe Bay- Bowen Island.

The new ferry, designed by North
Vancouver's McLaren ind Sons, will
be (10 metres (361 feet) long and 24
metres (78 feet) wide. [t is expected
to enter service in 1996, with a sec-
ond Century Class vessel planned for
delivery the following year.

in April, the provincial povernment
announced the expected cost for Century Class
vessels would be $18 million, but design addi-
tions to allow the ferry to be used at different ter-
minals increased the original cost, said BC
Ferries senior vice-president ‘fom Ward.

One union representative not doing cart:
wheels over the announcement was Bob
Docherty, business agent for Vancouver

See Ferry page 3