VT Group
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VT Group plc is the British defence company formerly known as Vosper Thornycroft. Founded by a merger between Vosper and Thornycroft in 1966, its original business was shipbuilding. It has since diversified into various engineering services. As of 2004 it had a turnover of £671 million and employed 10,000 people.
For many years, the company had a shipbuilding yard in Southampton, Hampshire but in 2003 relocated it's shipbuilding operations to new facilities in the famous HMNB Portsmouth Naval Dockyard under the name VT Shipbuilding. Its headquarters are located in Hedge End, Hampshire.
VT Group is now involved in many areas of provision, ranging from military to education and health.
History
The company was formed by the merger of two shipbuilding companies Vosper & Co. of Portsmouth and J I Thornycroft of Southampton in 1966. The former in small boats and the latter with a long history of building destroyers and similar sized craft.The company was nationalised by the Labour Government in the mid 1970s becoming a division of British Shipbuilders. It became a commercial company again after a management buyout in 1985.
Vosper Thornycroft has flourished even during lean times for warship building, mainly through successful sales efforts in exports and diversification outside of the core shipbuilding business into training and support.
In 2001, in their most ambitious diversification project to date, VT started work on the US$55million superyacht Mirabella V for former Avis Car Hire boss Joe Vittoria. At the time of its completion in 2004, Mirabella V was the World's largest single-masted sailing vessel with an overall length of 75 metres and a mast height of approximately 87 metres.
The overall business has been known as VT Group plc since 2002.
See also
External links
- [http://www.vosperthornycroft.co.uk/]
- [BAE Systems and VT abandon talks around potential Babcock bid] Extract from Jane's Defence Industry, 11 May 2006
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