UK DOCKS’ founder and chairman Harry Wilson has been made a Member of the British Empire (MBE) for his services to the country’s marine engineering industry.
Harry was named in the King’s Birthday Honours List for 2024 and will travel to Buckingham Palace to pick up his award later this year.
He said: “ “I'd heard whispers about something like this a while ago but nothing seemed to happen so I assumed it wasn’t going to and it came as a complete surprise when the letter dropped through the door.
"I had thought at 82 I might be past my sell-by date but it's a great honour to be given and I look forward to collecting it, although I don't know yet when that will be."
The award recognises Harry’s contribution to the marine industry since founding UK Docks on a single slipway in South Shields in 1992.
Since then, the company has expanded across the region and and across the country with docks on Teesside and on the south coast at Gosport and Cremyll.
Having established itself as a leading name in the UK’s ship repair industry, UK Docks has moved increasingly into servicing Ministry of Defence contracts for the Royal Navy.
Those efforts culminated last year with the winning of a £250m contract to service and maintain five Batch 2 vessels across the globe.
Now employing more than 200 people, one of the key driving forces behind the growth of the business has been Harry’s desire to regenerate areas of industrial decline and give something back to the community, including creating jobs.
In 2014 Harry saw the opportunity to expand the company’s ship repair facilities to Teesside, an area of high unemployment, and regenerated the dry docks which had been unused for over 20 years and required complete refurbishment.
The Teesside ship repair business has now been brought back to life, creating jobs, pride, and apprenticeship and attracting ship owners from the UK, Europe and beyond.
Since then, UK Docks has taken over and modernised Mashford Yards in Cremylll, Cornwall, Victoria Quay in Gosport and has also revitalised Royal Clarence Yard in Portsmouth which now has a deep-water berth, ship lift travel hoist and workshops.
Harry said: "The object of the exercise, after founding UK Docks and being able to make a living out of it, was to genuinely put something back into the ship repair industry.
"I'd had a pretty decent life from it, not necessarily an easy one, but a decent one and I believed in the industry and its potential and wanted to see it do well.
"I'm pleased to see that UK Docks has been able to grow over the years, developing dockyards in the North East and now all around the country, helping the marine industry to survive and flourish and create hundreds of jobs for the company and its supply chain that might not otherwise have been there.
"I've been lucky to have three sons who have all been interested in the business and have been able to take the company from strength to strength over the years and ensured that it has grown from local to regional to national and now, especially with the Ministry of Defence contracts, a global concern.”
The day-to-day running of the business is now managed by Harry’s sons Chris, Gary and Jonathan.
UK Docks' Harry Wilson and sons, l to r Jonathan, Harry, Gary and Chris
Jonathan said of the MBE: "It's fantastic news for him, for our family and for UK Docks as a company.
"We're obviously immensely proud of him - he's a one-off.
"It was Harry who had this vision of developing ship repair and re-opening yards at a time when so many others were closing and he's been proven right in his decision-making time after time.
"He's got a great reputation in our industry and he's responsible for what this company has grown into today.
"We've known how special he is all our lives but it's great that it has been officially recognised in this way.
"It's also, I think, a recognition of his charity work over the years because he has strongly supported a number of important causes and in particular has been a long-time supporter of South Shields Sea Cadets."