Ferguson Marine

Ferguson Marine (Port Glasgow) Limited is a shipbuilding company whose yard, located in Port Glasgow on the Firth of Clyde in Scotland, was established in 1903. It is the last remaining shipbuilder on the lower Clyde and is currently the only builder of merchant ships on the river.

For some years the company's mainstay has been Roll-on/roll-off ferries, primarily for Caledonian MacBrayne (CalMac), including a series of hybrid diesel-electric/battery-powered vessels. Beset with difficulties since 2018 over their latest two CalMac ferries, Fergusons' largest ever vessel, the shipyard was nationalised in December 2019. It is now classified as an executive non-departmental public body of the Scottish Government.

The Ferguson shipyard was founded as a partnership by four brothers, (Peter, Daniel, Louis and Robert) who left the Fleming & Ferguson shipyard in Paisley to lease the Newark yard in Port Glasgow in March 1903. The first vessel built by Messrs. Ferguson Brothers in the yard was the tug Flying Swift, launched on 26 October 1903. Ferguson Brothers acquired the freehold in the yard in 1907 and was incorporated as Ferguson Brothers (Port Glasgow) Ltd in 1912. The company was purchased by John Slater Ltd (Amalgamated Industries) in 1918 but returned to control of the Ferguson family in the late 1920s. Lithgows Ltd purchased an interest in the business after Bobby Ferguson's death in 1954 and took control of the Company in 1961. Ferguson Brothers remained a separate entity within the Scott Lithgow group from 1969 to 1977.

The company was nationalised and subsumed into British Shipbuilders in 1977, then merged with the Ailsa Shipbuilding Company to form Ferguson-Ailsa Ltd in 1980.

Ferguson and Ailsa were separated in 1986 when the latter yard was sold and Ferguson was merged with Appledore Shipbuilders in Devon to form Appledore Ferguson Shipbuilders Ltd. By the late 1980s only the Appledore Ferguson yards were still held in state ownership. Ferguson was demerged from Appledore and acquired by Greenock-based engineering firm Clark Kincaid in 1989 then started trading as Ferguson Shipbuilders.

Clark Kincaid itself was acquired by Kvaerner and became Kvaerner Kincaid in 1990, and the Ferguson yard sold to Ferguson Marine plc in 1991. The entire shareholding in Ferguson Marine was acquired by the Holland House Electrical Group in 1995. The sign above the main gate continued the name Ferguson Shipbuilders Limited. After they encountered difficulty in maintaining a flow of work, a Scottish Executive cabinet meeting on 1 June 2005 discussed news that orders for fishery protection vessels and a CalMac ferry had been won by the Remontowa shipyard in Gdańsk. The environment and rural affairs minister Ross Finnie said "If the contracts were awarded to the Rementowa (Polish) yard, there were no other orders in prospect for the Clydeside shipyard and since the launch of its last ship a month previously, the yard had declined to a state that was close to irreversible." The cabinet noted "with concern the outlook for the Ferguson shipyard". In August 2005 Fergusons laid off 100 members of staff, and this was discussed by Finnie at a cabinet meeting. The minutes of the meeting record that "It was difficult to explain to Scottish taxpayers why public funds were being used to buy a vessel from Poland and make redundancy payments to shipbuilders in Port Glasgow."

Between 2013 and 2016 the yard built three hybrid diesel-electric/battery powered ferries, beginning with Hallaig - the world's first.

In August 2014, the shipyard placed the company into administration and the following month Clyde Blowers Capital, an industrial company owned by Jim McColl, purchased the yard for £600,000 and renamed it Ferguson Marine Engineering Limited (FMEL).