It is one of five companies in the running to take the controversial “physical integrator” role in the £9 billion carrier programme. The Defence Procurement Agency, an arm of the Ministry of Defence, will start the selection process this week.
The revelation that the ministry has put a French bidder on the short list will provoke fury among British defence groups and shipyards, which are fearful that work will be siphoned off to France.
Also in the running is Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR), a subsidiary of the American defence contractor Halliburton. Halliburton has strong links to the Bush administration — the vice-president Dick Cheney is a former chairman.
Labour critics of the Iraq war will seize on KBR’s involvement in a key British defence project. Halliburton has won several potentially lucrative Iraq reconstruction contracts from the American government.
Alstom impressed defence officials with its performance in building the Queen Mary II, a £550m, 150,000- tonne luxury cruise liner for Cunard that was launched from its Chantiers de l’Atlantique shipyard in St Nazaire last year.
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Alstom executives are understood to have told the Ministry of Defence that the liner proved its expertise in large-hull construction. The Royal Navy’s carriers will, at 65,000 tonnes, be smaller, but they are likely to have the same propulsion system.
However, disastrous investments in financing its cruise-liner programme helped push Alstom to the brink of bankruptcy last year. It was saved only by the French government, which underwrote an 11th-hour financial rescue package that provoked a furious state-aid row with Brussels.
The £1.7 billion restructuring was finally signed off last Tuesday. The French Treasury now holds a 21.4% stake in the company.
The aircraft carriers will be the most powerful warships ever fielded by the Royal Navy, and are scheduled to enter service in 2012 and 2015.
The award of the contract to build the ships has proved controversial. BAE Systems and Thales, the French contractor, were last year chosen to build the ships in an alliance, with BAE nominated as a prime contractor to run the entire programme. But budget wrangles — the ships are likely to cost £4 billion to build, rather than the £2.9 billion provided by the Ministry of Defence — have led to a series of changes. BAE will no longer be prime contractor, and the ships will be built under a broad alliance led by the ministry itself.
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A separate “physical integrator” will manage construction of the hulls. The other four companies in the running for the role are BAE, VT Group, Amec and KBR. It had been expected that only Amec and KBR would be in the running, but lobbying from shipbuilders means the competition has been extended. BAE had originally fiercely resisted the creation of the integrator role.
British shipbuilders, which had expected work on sections of the carrier to keep their yards busy for up to four years, have long been nervous over a high-level agreement between Britain and France to collaborate on the ships.
France needs one new carrier, which will be roughly the same size as the UK ships. It will be built by Thales and DCN, the French government’s naval-shipbuilding company.