ASC Shipbuilding gears up for Osborne South Surface Warship Facilities handover.

Construction is nearing completion in the $500 million upgrade of Adelaide’s new high-tech frigate shipyard with five new sheds rising from its Port River site. Despite the COVID-19 outbreak, the handover is still planned for June 2020.
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Artist impression of the Osborne South Naval Shipbuilding Precinct (Picture source: Commonwealth of Australia, Department of Defence)

According to ASC Shipbuilding director Jim Cuthill, five new sheds in the shipyard were being fitted with state-of-the-art equipment. In effect, this means that contractors Australian Naval Infrastructure and Lendlease are successfully tracking towards a handover deadline, originally scheduled for July.

In 2017, the Australian Government unveiled the design and turned the first sod for the new surface shipbuilding yard in Osborne, South Australia. The unveiling of the design for this $535 million project is an exciting insight into the future of Osborne's shipyards that is a result of this Government's $89 billion investment in our future shipbuilding industry.

The infrastructure expansion and upgrades are a fundamental enabler of the construction of the Future Frigates and are key to delivering a continuous naval shipbuilding program which will support thousands of Australian jobs.

Workers employed on the frigates project run by ASC Shipbuilding, a subsidiary of defence giant BAE Systems Australia, are now just over 600 with Cuthill saying this would be climbing up from July to hit about 1000 by the end of 2020.

Australian "Hunter" class frigate (Picture source: US Navy)

With Australian Naval Infrastructure gearing up for the phased hand over of the Osborne Naval Shipyard South to ASC Shipbuilding, BAE Systems is getting ready to start prototyping for the Hunter-class frigates

Two Arafura Class offshore patrol vessels (OPVs) are currently being built at Osborne. And the last of three air warfare destroyers built at Osborne was recently handed over to the Royal Australian Navy.