CALMAC chief executive Robbie Drummond has warned over a third of the west of Scotland lifeline ferry fleet is operating beyond its life expectancy.
Mr Drummond has admitted to staff that the ageing fleet of vessels is hitting its commitment to provide "the best ferry service", that record sums in maintenance has been required and has raised issues in sourcing parts for their older vessels.
It has emerged that Mr Drummond provided the commentary while sanctioning the spend of hundreds of thousands of pounds by providing a 1.5% bonus to staff which was due in pay packets last month.
The award was made to recognise "ongoing efforts" of staff amidst growing concerns over the disruption to services in the midst of Scotland's island transport crisis.
This culminated in an island protest following CalMac’s cancellation of ferries between the mainland port of Mallaig and Lochboisdale on South Uist for the whole of June with local businesses estimating a loss of £50,000 per day due to tourism, imports and exports being hit by the cut.
An estimated 500 residents, 200 cars, 40 vans and 20 lorries converged on Lochboisdale - the port which links South Uist to the mainland - on June 4 to protest about the cancellations and Mr Drummond made trips to meet islanders to explain the decision.
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South Uist has been consistently hit by cancellations to services through the CalMac route prioritisation matrix which attempts to restrict disruption to the fewest islanders. Last year residents complained that food rations in local shops were the result of freight delivery failures brought about by a ferry breakdown, something denied by the ferry operator.
Concerns emerged that there has been a failure to conduct island communities' impact assessments or consult over the method used to decide how services are axed due to breakdowns of Scotland's ageing ferry fleet in breach of the Scottish Government's ground-breaking Islands (Scotland) Act made law in 2018.
Mr Drummond has told staff in a circular that CalMac "continue to face several growing challenges" which are affecting the "commitment to provide the best ferry service for our customers and communities - particularly with the age of the fleet".
He said that with the average age of a ferry being 25 years, over one third of the 35 vessels are operating "beyond their life expectancy of 30 years".
He said that meant they require more and more maintenance and are more liable to suffer technical failures.
He also warned in his outlook for 2023/24 that it can be difficult to source parts for the older vessels because they are no longer manufactured, meaning more time is spent having to have specific parts made from scratch.
The repair bill for CalMac’s fleet has passed £100m in the last five years with £26.5m spent in 2022/23 alone.
The official life expectancy of ferries has grown by some ten years since 2002.
One former CalMac executive has said it was a "simple ruse" that he believes has put off expenditure on replacements for the fleet.
In 1973, when the Caledonian Steam Packet Co. acquired most of the ferries and routes and began joint Clyde and West Highland operations under the new name of Caledonian MacBrayne, the official expected life of a ferry had been 20 years.
That is until 2002, three years after the 1999 devolution when the then Scottish Government-owned Caledonian MacBrayne which then owned the fleet and procured vessels, extended the 'working life' from 20 years to 25 years.
Currently half of the fleet is aged 25 years and over with the oldest vessel being MV Isle of Cumbrae at 47-years-old.
A ferry user group official said Mr Drummond's admission was "welcome" but "disturbing" and showed that improvements to the west coast fleet were "urgently needed" in the short term.
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"It beggars belief that we have let the fleet to get to the state it is in and what is needed is action now in the short term to fix the continuing resilience and capacity issues. For the sake of islanders we need to get vessels in now and it is incredible that [ferry owners] CMAL have been unable to find second hand vessels to plug the gaping holes."
Mr Drummond told staff that with Scottish Government funding they will get 16 new vessels in the next five years - six major and ten small - which would bring "extremely welcome additional tonnage to our services and strengthen resilience".
He warned: "We will continue to face challenging times until these vessels join us, but we continue to work to maintain resilience in the meantime."
And he added: "Despite a challenging financial outlook, we are investing record sums in maintenance as it is the right thing to do for our customers and communities.
"I am confident that there is much to look forward to and we should be optimistic for the future."
CalMac has received £10.5m in poor performance fines in the six-and-a-half years since CalMac took the franchise - nearly eight times more than in its first nine years in charge of the beleaguered west coast fleet.
The publicly subsidised ferry operator made a £2.35m loss in 2021/22.
Meanwhile, CalMac's parent company David MacBrayne Group (DMG) has received nearly £900m in taxpayer subsidies over six years from the Scottish Government to run the ferry services since securing the ferry contract in 2016. The level of handout has soared from £131.939m in 2016/17 to over £163m in 2021/22 including £11.7m in Covid funding.
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