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Two UK Royal Navy frigates will be setting course for a new lease of life in the

  • Black Sea after a £116mn BAE Systems refit supported by ECGD.

    The Type 22 frigates formerly HMS Coventry and HMS London will be overhauled in Portsmouth before heading for Romania under a contract between the UK’s ministry of defence (MoD) and the Romanian government. The MoD has subcontracted the transfer, regeneration and modernisation of the ships to BAE Systems.

    ECGD issued a buyer credit for £85mn to BAE Systems for the UK phase of the project. The London offices of Deutsche Bank and ABN Amro Bank arranged the financing.

    The contract is being managed through the Customer Solutions & Support (CS&S) group within BAE Systems. CS&S will be working with its two Portsmouth-based joint ventures, Fleet Support Limited (FSL) and Flagship Training. FSL will carry out the regeneration work at Portsmouth naval base and Flagship will train the Romanian crews to operate the vessels, which will be used in a patrol capacity.

    Piers Constable at Deutsche Bank, who acted as agent of the buyer credit, says, “This project has had a very high profile in Romania given the recent invitation to join Nato. We were set a very tight timetable for concluding the financing arrangements, and the flexibility and co-operation shown by ECGD meant we were able to sign the loans after just 30 working days.”