The Belfast shipyard Harland & Wolff has announced it moved back into profit last year. But its annual report for 1998, published in Belfast yesterday, shows the company's order book extends only to the end of the first quarter of next year.
The report shows the company made a pre-tax profit of £5.1 million sterling (€7.6 million) on a turnover of £222 million in 1998, compared to a £1.5 million loss on a turnover of £178 million in the previous year.
The operating profit before interest for the company, which belongs to Norwegian-based Fred Olsen group, was £900,000 compared to a loss of £2.8 million in 1997.
The report discloses that Harland & Wolff has tendered to the British ministry of defence to build two landing craft for the Royal Navy.
Mr Per Nielsen, the company's chief executive, hoped the British government would enter into some form of partnership arrangement with H&W over the aircraft carrier contract "as no single company has the ability or capacity to fulfil the whole scope of supply".
The company had previously focused its operations on the construction of sophisticated vessels for the offshore oil and gas industry. But due to the decline in oil prices, oil firms have been cutting their orders for such vessels.
