The UK defense ministry announced it has awarded Babcock’s Rosyth dockyard a £5 million contract for the first planned dry-dock maintenance of the Royal Navy aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth.
As announced by defense minister Stuart Andrew, the contract will allow the 65,000-tonne carrier to undergo a routine, planned hull survey and maintenance of her underwater systems over a six-week period at the company’s Rosyth site.
The work will sustain 100 jobs at its peak and be carried out in the summer.
“After a phenomenal year of trials off the East Coast of the US, this dry-docking contract is an important step for HMS Queen Elizabeth as she gears up for operations,” Stuart Andrew said.
“The largest ship in our Royal Navy’s history, which was assembled in Rosyth, will now return for this multi-million-pound routine maintenance work as she gets set to represent Britain across the world for decades to come.”
The dry-docking period will mark the carrier’s return to the shipyard where she was built.
Her sister ship, HMS Prince of Wales, is currently undergoing the final stages of construction at the Rosyth yard and was powered up for the first time in November.
She is due to be handed over to the Royal Navy later this year.
HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales are the largest ships ever built for the Royal Navy.
HMS Queen Elizabeth will start the third and final stage of aviation trials later this year with British-owned F-35s. She is expected to enter operational service in 2020, prior to her first deployment in 2021.