Construction of Australia’s AUKUS-class nuclear powered submarines is more than a decade away, but when it happens it will be in a new production facility near where the Navy’s Collins-class submarines were built in an earlier age.
On Sunday, the government announced $3.9 billion funding towards the new Submarine Construction Yard in Osborne, South Australia.
That’s an extension of the precinct where the Collins-class conventionally powered submarines are currently maintained and where the Navy’s new Hunter-class frigates are being built.
This will be a far more modern yard than the UK facility in Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, where the first SSN AUKUS will be built.
For Australia, this is a vast infrastructure project, featuring three areas for fabrication, outfitting and further area for consolidation, testing launching and commission.
The Fabrication Hall in Area 1 alone will be 420 metres long, more than double the length of Adelaide Oval.
Total floor area of the new Submarine Construction Yard is expected to be 10 times larger than the existing Osborne South Development project, using 126,000 tonnes of structural steel.
The government has appointed Australian Naval Infrastructure (ANI) as the design and delivery partner for the yard.
The $3.9 billion is just the start. ANI has projected an investment of $30 billion over the coming decades for this project.
Substantial enabling works have already been completed, including a new link road to improve access, creating a direct route bypassing the existing railway line, ensuring secure access to both current and future shipyards.
A project of this magnitude will require a substantial workforce. Work on the new Skills and Training Academy campus started last year, with the first student intake planned for 2028.
More than 500 workers are already on the job helping to build the STA Campus and the Production Demonstration Facilities within the Submarine Construction Yard.
“This is a driver not just of our national security and how we're going to defend our nation into the future, it's also a driver of our economic prosperity,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told reporters.
“This represents an extraordinary opportunity for people to have good, secure, well-paid jobs. The fact that we are setting up here on-site this skills centre, that will make an enormous difference. Producing a thousand apprentices each and every year will make an enormous difference.”
Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy said this project would modernise Australian manufacturing.
“It's not just the 10,000 jobs here. We've got 70 companies already going through the qualification process to win work, supplying not just Australian submarines, but UK and US submarines,” he said.
South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas said this proposed investment completely dwarfed other investments in the state’s recent past.
“The investment here at the Osborne South Shipyard was extraordinary. But it pales into insignificance in comparison to the $30 billion investment that will be associated to the construction of the yard that will build the nation's nuclear submarines that will protect our country for generations,” he said.