LONDON — A marine engineering company in southwest England has been selected to customize four new military tankers being built in South Korea to support the new Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers and other Royal Navy warships.

A deal awarding the work to A&P Marine's facilities in Falmouth, Cornwall, to fit out the new 37,000-ton Tide-class tankers with UK-specific equipment is due to be announced in the next few weeks, a Defence Ministry said a Ministry of Defence source said.

A spokeswoman for the MoD confirmed an announcement will be made in the near future.

The tankers are being built by the South Korean shipyard DMSE using a design from the British company BMT Defence Services as part of the MoD's Military Afloat Reach and Sustainability program.

A&P and BMT have worked together previously, most notably on the upgrade and life extension of RFA Argus, the casualty receiving ship Argus, now in Sierre Leone as part of Britain's effort to combat the Ebola disease.

Selection of BMT's design, known as the Aegir, has proved a significant boost for the Bath, southwest England-based, naval and defense consultancy.

Norway has purchased a variant of the design for a new logistics and support vessel it is having built in South Korea; and Australia and New Zealand are also interested in the design.

The £452 million (US $684 million) deal awarded by the British MoD in 2012 to buy the four tankers caused controversy in the media and elsewhere due to the fact the order had gone overseas.

The reality, though, was no British yard competed for the award, in the a competition which in the final phases attracted only foreign bidders.

The value of the A&P deal is not yet known at this point. At the time of the 2012 contract award, the MoD said £60 million of investment would be spent in the UK from customization, trials and specialist engineering support.

A&P, which has three sites in the UK, already works on elements of the support ship fleet operated by the Royal Fleet Auxiliary and has also been involved in other naval programs, including fabricating parts of the two-65,000 tonne aircraft carriers being built by a BAE Systems-led alliance for the Royal Navy.

An article in an in-house magazine produced by the Defence Equipment & Support arm of the MoD, said the first of the new class of tankers is on track to complete the build phase this fall in the autumn before entering service next year.

The article said that while the tankers will be built in South Korea, the vessels will travel to the UK for customization and capability trials ahead of entering service.

The desider magazine reported that the first block on the first of class, the RFA Tidespring, has been laid and the first cutting of steel on the following tanker, the RFA Tiderace, took place in December.

Tiderace is due to enter service in 2017.

The fast fleet tankers are being built to replace single-hulled RFA Rover- and Leaf-class tankers that are no longer environmentally acceptable.

Email: achuter@defensenews.com

Andrew Chuter is the United Kingdom correspondent for Defense News.

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