'Redundancies' at Beatrice jacket supplier

UK: Thirty-five employees have reportedly been made redundant at Burntisland Fabrication (BiFab), less than three weeks after new investment was secured for the under-threat steel fabricators.

by Craig Richard 4 May 2018

Steel being cut at BiFab before being turned into foundation components (pic credit: Beatrice Offshore Windfarm Ltd)

Senior executives from new owners DF Barnes told workers and their trade union representatives of the fresh redundancies on 4 May, according to the GMB Scotland and Unite Scotland unions.

DF Barnes, a subsidiary of Canadian industrial construction company JV Driver, had following extensive negotiations with the Scottish government in mid-April.

BiFab had launched a in February as it neared the end of a contract to provide jacket foundations for 26 of the 588MW Beatrice project’s 84 wind turbines, and two jackets and piles for its offshore transformer module.

With no other pipeline contracts in its renewables, oil and gas or facilities divisions, BiFab’s engineering yards in Fife in eastern Scotland and Arnish on the Isle of Lewis off the country’s west coast .

GMB Scotland and Unite Scotland added that some workers could be out of work in two weeks’ time.

DF Barnes and BiFab have not immediately responded to “uåX˜äŠÊ˜·³Ç's request for comment.