Devonport Management Limited owned and managed

Devonport Royal Dockyard His Majesty's Naval Base, Devonport (HMNB Devonport) is one of three operating bases in the United Kingdom for the Royal Navy (the others being HMNB Clyde and HMNB Portsmouth) and is the sole nuclear repair and refuelling facility for the R ...

, the largest dockyard in Western Europe from 1987 until 2007. DML was purchased by

Babcock International Babcock International Group plc is a British aerospace, defence and nuclear engineering services company based in London, England. It specialises in managing complex assets and infrastructure. Although the company has civil contracts, its main b ...

and was rebranded

Babcock Marine Babcock International Group plc is a British aerospace, defence and nuclear engineering services company based in London, England. It specialises in managing complex assets and infrastructure. Although the company has civil contracts, its main b ...

History

DML, then owned by Brown & Root and

Vickers Vickers was a British engineering company that existed from 1828 until 1999. It was formed in Sheffield as a steel foundry by Edward Vickers and his father-in-law, and soon became famous for casting church bells. The company went public in ...

, was one of three companies bidding for the Devonport contract in 1986. The others were Devonport Dockyard, formed by the then management of the dockyard, and a consortium of

Foster Wheeler Foster Wheeler AG (formerly Foster Wheeler Inc.) was a Swiss global engineering conglomerate with its principal executive offices in Reading, UK and its registered office in Baar, Canton of Zug, Switzerland. Foster Wheeler was added to the NA ...

Appledore Shipbuilders Appledore Shipbuilders is a shipbuilder in Appledore, North Devon, England. History The Appledore Yard was founded in 1855 on the estuary of the River Torridge. The Richmond Dry Dock was built in 1856 by William Yeo and named after Richmond ...

and Wharton Williams. The DML ownership structure was restructured in 1987, with Brown & Root,

Balfour Beatty Balfour Beatty plc () is an international infrastructure group based in the United Kingdom with capabilities in construction services, support services and infrastructure investments. A constituent of the FTSE 250 Index, Balfour Beatty works ac ...

and

Weir Group The Weir Group plc is a Scottish multinational engineering company headquartered in Glasgow, Scotland. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. History The company was established in 1871 as an eng ...

each owning 29.9% and

Barclays de Zoete Wedd Barclays () is a British multinational universal bank, headquartered in London, England. Barclays operates as two divisions, Barclays UK and Barclays International, supported by a service company, Barclays Execution Services. Barclays traces ...

owning 10.3%. Vickers had formed a joint venture with Brown & Root which included its contracting arm. The management contract was awarded to DML on 24 February 1987, with management officially transferred on 6 April 1987 The dockyards remained property of the

Ministry of Defence {{unsourced, date=February 2021 A ministry of defence or defense (see spelling differences), also known as a department of defence or defense, is an often-used name for the part of a government responsible for matters of defence, found in state ...

at this stage. In June 1993 DML was awarded the contract for refitting of

Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by Kingdom of England, English and Kingdom of Scotland, Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were foug ...

nuclear submarines. This was the result of a two-year highly politicised battle between DML and the management of

Rosyth Dockyard Rosyth Dockyard is a large naval dockyard on the Firth of Forth at Rosyth, Fife, Scotland, owned by Babcock Marine, which formerly undertook refitting of Royal Navy surface vessels and submarines. Before its privatisation in the 1990s it was ...

in Scotland. The Rosyth Dockyard already had nuclear refitting facilities under construction when, in 1993, DML made an unsolicited bid to take over the work which in future would only be awarded to one yard. For the next two years the two dockyards made tit-for-tat claims regarding the suitability of their own facilities compared to their competitor. In 1994

GEC GEC or Gec may refer to: Education * Gedo Education Committee, in Somalia * Glen Eira College, in Caulfield East, Victoria, Australia * Goa Engineering College, India * Government Engineering College (disambiguation) * Guild for Exceptional ...

acquired

Vickers Shipbuilding & Engineering Vickers Shipbuilding and Engineering, Ltd (VSEL) was a shipbuilding company based at Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria in northwest England that built warships, civilian ships, submarines and armaments. The company was historically the Naval Construc ...

and withdrew it from the DML consortium. At the urging of the Ministry of Defence, Brown & Root took a 51% stake DML. In February 1993 DML purchased the Devonport yard for £40.3 million. In 1998 Brown & Root's parent,

Halliburton Halliburton Company is an American multinational corporation responsible for most of the world's hydraulic fracturing operations. In 2009, it was the world's second largest list of oilfield service companies, oil field service company. It has o ...

indirectly acquired The M. W. Kellogg Company and merged it with Brown & Root to form

KBR KBR can stand for: * KBR (company), formerly Kellogg, Brown & Root, US * KBR (news agency), an Indonesian radio news agency * KBR Park, Hyderabad, India * Kafa language, spoken in Ethiopia * Key-based routing in computer networking * Potassium brom ...

. In 2006 it was announced that Halliburton would be floating its subsidiary KBR on the stock market, this went ahead against the wishes of the UK government and Ministry of Defence as they felt the floating of KBR would make the DML group unstable. In 2004 DML acquired

in North Devon. In early 2007 it was announced that the DML group was for sale and major players in the world defence industry were rumoured to be interested in buying the company from the current share holders. BAE Systems was one of the companies rumoured to be interested; The ''

Independent on Sunday ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publis ...

'' suggested that the Ministry of Defence was keen to see these combined with BAE's submarine manufacturing facilities. In the end this sale was not completed and DML was bought by

instead. Only two companies lodged bids by the closing date; Babcock International and

Carlyle Group The Carlyle Group is a multinational private equity, alternative asset management and financial services corporation based in the United States with $376 billion of assets under management. It specializes in private equity, real assets, and p ...

. Babcock was announced as the successful bidder for Devonport in a deal that was worth £350 million and would secure them a 100% stake in the company.Naval dockyard bought for £350m
''

BBC News BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broad ...

'' 10 May 2007 Babcock international announced that the DML Group would then become part of

, a new sector (of which Rosyth Dockyard is also a part) within its organisation. The deal was approved by the Ministry of Defence at the end of June 2007.

References

External links

DML Group
{{Authority control Defence companies of the United Kingdom Trident (UK nuclear programme) 1993 establishments in England 2007 disestablishments in England