Finally, we might say, this is the end of the tunnel for the Royal Moroccan Navy patrol boat construction project, ordered in January 2021 from the Spanish public company Navantia San Fernando. Indeed, this summer, in July, it will begin construction work on a high seas patrol vessel for Morocco.
The patrol boat commanded by the Royal Moroccan Navy in Navantia, is of type Before 1800, is 89 meters long, can accommodate an average crew of 46 people. The original design envisions the incorporation of a 76mm gun and missile launch system, along with modern sensors and radars and a bridge for a helicopter.
The construction of the Avante 1800 ship, of the latest generation, which will join the Royal Navy, will take place thanks to the granting of a loan that Banco Santander granted to Rabat for an amount of 95 million euros. Indeed, Morocco obtained a loan from Banco Santander worth 90 million euros thanks to which it will cover part of the purchase of the patrol boat. Its price fluctuates between 130 and 150 million euros. We can now say that the contract for the acquisition by the Royal Moroccan Navy of a patrol boat on the high seas from Navantia SA is a contract in progress.
It’s in April 2020, that the Kingdom had launched a call for tenders for the construction of a Coastal Surveillance Vessel (BVL), an Avante 1800 class patrol boat. Ihe Spanish public company Navantia won the contract and offered Morocco the construction of two patrol boats worth 260 million euros. But for now we are only at the first. Navantia specified that its manufacture would represent one million hours of work for the shipyards in the Bay of Cadiz and nearly 250 jobs over the next three and a half years.
In Last January, the CEO of the shipbuilder Navantia, Ricardo Dominguez, indicated that although the construction work of the patrol boat ordered by Morocco had not yet started, he was confident about the execution of the project, assuring that he ” followed his agenda. This is one of the last contracts concluded by the Spanish shipbuilding industry which will develop in the Bay of Cadiz, and to which it is planned to add the extension of the agreement with Saudi Arabia.
Construction in the naval branch of the San Fernando Shipyard is at a minimum. The first batch of corvettes for Saudi Arabia is nearing completion and the last of the units will be transferred to Saudi Arabia where construction will be completed. The new portfolio of works should start from the month of July, once the engineering is finished and it is then that the cutting of the sheet metal of the new high seas patrol boat planned for the Royal Moroccan Navy should take place.