German shipbuilder TKMS ready to relocate Australian headquarters to Adelaide if it wins new submarines bid

GERMAN shipbuilder TKMS is ready to immediately increase staff numbers and relocate its Australian headquarters to Adelaide if it wins the bid to build the nation’s new submarines.

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GERMAN shipbuilder TKMS is ready to immediately increase staff numbers and relocate its Australian headquarters to Adelaide if it wins the bid to build the nation’s new submarines.

The defence industry is on tenterhooks after the Federal Government claimed a decision was imminent on the $20 billion plus project.

Thyssenkrupp Marine Systems have spent the past five months creating a rapid response plan to a potential win.

TKMS Australia chief executive officer Philip Stanford, who is in Germany showing media the company’s submarine shipyard in Kiel, said the first job was to recruit a human resources team to start hiring.

“We are going to move our national headquarters of TKMS to Adelaide, initially to the CBD and I will immediately be employing human resources staff to manage growth of the company,” Mr Stanford said.

The Federal Government has indicated a decision on the winning tender to build 12 submarines could be made within weeks.

WE’RE READY: TKMS Australia chief executive Philip Stanford.

Mr Stanford believed TKMS’s edge on its French and Japanese competitors was its extensive experience working with international partners to build submarines.

The company has supplied submarines to 20 countries since 1960.

“We can provide leading edge submarines and along with that we have vast experience which includes setting up shipyards and transferring knowledge to the customers,” he said.

The company’s commitment to building at South Australia’s ASC shipyard at Osborne would also help give Australia the “highest chance of regional capability and sovereign sustainable capability”, he claimed.

He said the company had no indication of an announcement from the government but had built a list of 3500 potential Australian company suppliers to support a build in preparation.

Nearly 500 companies across Australia had also attended meetings with TKMS to hear about its proposal.

Mr Stanford said there were two TKMS staff based in Adelaide, and he expected eight more would come on board in the first month if TKMS was awarded the contract.

Another dozen would join the office in the first six months to begin recruiting administration staff and then engineers to work on the early design process.

So far, the company had used 150 staff to work on its bid in the competitive evaluation process with about 30 of those based in Australia.

Mr Stanford said TKMS has “the industrial might to support this program in Australia” and the German Government support was “unprecedented”.

Belinda Willis travelled to Germany as a guest of TKMS