Shelburne Ship repair has been sold by Irving Shipbuilding to Mersey Seafoods. Since 2014, Shelburne Ship repair has been the center of commercial ship repair work for Irving, with none happening in Halifax. Halifax shipyard has been focused on Building the AOPS, and frigate maintenance work.

All 67 employees at the yard will be retained by Mersey Seafoods. Shelburne Ship repair underwent significant upgrades in 2011, including a new marine railway. The total bill for the upgrades was 16milliion dollars. Shelburne Ship Repair can work on vessels up to 229 metres long, and the marine railway is capable of lifting two vessels weighing up to 4,200 tonnes each.

Since the Upgrade, the yard has conducted work on dozens of vessels including the refit on the CCGS Kolpit Hopson 1752, which was brought to Dartmouth for completion, Presumably to allow the sale to close with no work left in the yard.

Mersey Seafoods operates a number of Fishing Vessels, and is based in Liverpool Nova Scotia. Their trawler Mersey Phoenix is currently undergoing a work period in Spain.

The sale could signal that Irving is looking to focus solely on Government work under the NSPS, or they could be looking to do more repair work in Halifax. Halifax Shipyard is set to conduct its first  commercial ship repair work in a number of years.  

The yard is scheduled to conduct maintenance and Inspections on four Atlantic Towing platform supply vessels supporting the Hibernia and Hebron projects off Newfoundland. The Atlantic Shrike, Atlantic Griffon, Atlantic Heron, and Paul A Sacuta were constructed in 2016 and entered service in 2017.  The 4 ships are built to Daemen’s PSV 5000 Design, and are virtually identical, though the Paul A Sacuta features an 100ton capacity offshore crane.  

The coasting trade application indicates that each ship will be lifted out of the water for 7 days, and the 4 ships will be done sequentially, between February 15^th at the earliest and concluding by May 31. The ships are due for their 5 year class surveys.