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Nearly 1,000 jobs could be created thanks to plans to bring marine manufacturing and support industries back to the Upper Clyde.

Glasgow-based marine engineering company Malin Group, working with Scottish Enterprise, wants to set up a Scottish Marine Technology Park at Old Kilpatrick in West Dunbartonshire.

Malin Group has a worldwide operation but its Clydeside roots go back to the Victorian Era. It wants to set up the park in one of Scotland's unemployment blackspots, transforming a derelict 47-acre site, formerly home to the Carless oil storage facility, which suffered extensive damage during the second world war.

Unlike locations further up the Clyde, the site is land zoned for industrial use and will have direct access to a deep-water channel via an 80-metre long deep water quayside berth with heavy lift facilities.

Malin Group managing director John MacSween said he believed the hub would be a “magnet” for marine engineering and technology organisations and “a centre of excellence” for the sector.

An economic impact assessment of the development by land development and infrastructure consultants Peter Brett Associates, commissioned by Malin, found the park would create 986 jobs, if fully realised, and add £125.4 million annually to West Dunbartonshire's economy.

The construction phase of the project will also see more than 600 additional short-term jobs created.

John MacSween said: “The heritage of the Clyde is something of which we should all be rightly proud. We have been working in the shipping industry for over 100 years and have a passion for the river and its history, but there is a need to be looking to the future to ensure the long-term success of the Clyde as a maritime centre of excellence.

“There are already great examples of this in the form of what is being done at BAE Systems and at Ferguson Marine in the shipbuilding sector.

"Training and ship-management too are very well represented and the Department of Naval Architecture at Strathclyde University is a world class centre for research and learning in the marine sector.

“What we are looking to achieve at Old Kilpatrick is to complement these activities and bring other marine clients, companies and interests here.

"I believe this development will be a magnet that will draw marine organisations to it, and that it will ultimately become a centre of excellence for the sector.

“The flexibility of the site is key. We will provide a blank canvas and I see it as an industrial marine incubator. We want to create a marine technology hub which brings together providers of research, skills development, design, manufacturing and practical marine operational and logistics experience in a location that has complementary facilities backed by direct access to the deep-water channel of the River Clyde."

MacSween said he was "very pleased" Scottish Enterprise was working with Malin Group in "pushing this venture forward".

He added: "We are excited about the impact it will have both on this part of the Clyde, and Scotland as a whole.

“We carried out a wide-ranging search along the Clyde over several years to identify a suitable site, and despite heavy contamination from its oil refinery past and the need for extensive quay and access work the Carless site in Old Kilpatrick was the obvious answer.”

The development, which is in an advanced stage of planning with West Dunbartonshire Council, will see a £10 million remediation and regeneration of the contaminated land that is a legacy of the past oil refinery.

Malin will also move its own fabrication company, which currently builds workboats for the aquaculture industry and other marine fabrications at Renfrew, to the site to kick start the development.

Bodies involved in a consultation were Scottish Canals, West Dunbartonshire Council, Crown Estates, Marine Scotland, Scottish Natural Heritage and the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency.

Mark Newlands, regional head of partnerships at Scottish Enterprise, said: "We welcome Malin’s ambitious plans to revitalise this site and create much needed jobs in the West Dunbartonshire area. We look forward to working alongside the company to support its growth aspirations.”