The former boss of troubled shipping giant Harland & Wolff has defended his decision to acquire a small boat yard site which led to the closure of a "lifeblood" Highland business.

Donald Sharman, owner of Mallaig Boat Yard, claims he was told in a text message that the site his business had operated on for more than 10 years had been sold to the firm, which is best known for building the Titanic.

The company announced this month that it has called in administrators leaving hundreds of manufacturing jobs in Scotland facing an uncertain future.

At the time of the buyout, around a year ago, Harland & Wolff was headed up by chief executive  John Wood who left in July after the firm announced it was winding down "non-core" business lines.

Mr Sharman said he was surprised that a major company would "take an interest in a little backyard boatyard in the middle of nowhere that could do only a quarter of what they said they were intending to do with it."


The company bought the site following a dispute over a repair carried out on one of the former CEO's private boats by the Mallaig business.

Speaking exclusive to The Herald Mr Wood said the yard was acquired as part of a plan by Harland & Wolff  to redevelop Mallaig as part of a larger Scottish strategy to maintain fish farm vessels, larger boats and commercial trawlers.

He said the company owned other small slipways.

John Wood, former CEO of Harland & Wolff John Wood, former CEO of Harland & Wolff (Image: YouTube) He said: "In addition Mallaig was intended to be one of our service support centres for dealing with proposed new build ferries for CalMac.

"Our offering would have been to build and offer through-life support.

"The entire Scottish strategy for H&W was approved by the board initially in 2023, which included several sites including Mallaig."

(Image: Martini archive) He claimed Mr Sharman was in significant arrears and this motivated the landlord's decision to sell. He said the owner was offered six months notice to vacate the site and longer if it could be negotiated.

He made other claims against Mr Sharman saying the site did not meet Health and Safety Executive standards, that winches and cradles failed safety examinations and he was surprised it had not been shut down.

He said: "After several surveys the decision was made that it would be cheaper to demolish the entire facility and start to rebuild.

"A new design, plant and equipment had been identified which would have led to a significant upgrade of the facility.

"Donald had been offered to acquire the freehold on the property on numerous occasions in the past five years by the landlord and could not raise the funding to proceed."

READ MORE:

He added: "Whilst it is unfortunate that the H&W plan has not materialised with government doing a U-turn on a guarantee, given the waterside facility I am sure it will return to being a prosperous repair yard in the future."

Site owner Finlay Finlayson said his land was sold  "with the best intentions" and he was disappointed that plans by Harland & Wolff had not come to fruition.

Mr Sharman has since re-located his business to Fort William and said he has been able to expand but said the closure had been a big loss to Mallaig, which has had a difficult tourism season amid continuing uncertainty over the Jacobite steam train.

He said: "It was a tourist hotspot, we were supporting visitors to the marina. Staff at the yard would put back into other businesses - we all supported each other."

Responding to Mr Wood's claims he said: "We have never been or never will be in rent arrears.

"We were not given six months notice and yes we had the option to buy but every time we got to an agreed price it was increased.

"Admittedly the cradles we left were in poor condition as I had taken the new ones with us as they belonged to me.

"We had had various issues regarding HSE but ultimately managed to comply with regulations."