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Hunting PLC

Hunting PLC is a £1.3 billion turnover international group which was founded in 1874. The company is about the 130th largest company in Britain with major interests in Oil Services, Defence Engineering and Military Support. It consists of thre operating divisions; Aviation, Defence and Oil, and employs some 12,500 people world wide. The Defence Division consists of three principal activities; Hunting Engineering, the development of weapons systems for the UK Government and of communication systems in military vehicles; Irvin Aerospace, the manufacture of retarders and parachutes in four countries, and Hunting-BRAE, the management of the Atomic Weapons Establishment on behalf of the Ministry of Defence.

In 1993, the Ministry of Defence handed the responsibility for managing and operating AWE to Hunting-BRAE, a consortium comprising Hunting Engineering Ltd., Brown and Root Ltd. and Atomic Energy Authority. Hunting-BRAE is the contractor for the management and operation of the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) comprising four sites at Aldermaston, Burghfield, Foulness and Cardiff.

The Government Owned Contractor Operated (GOCO) arrangement at AWE was set up in 1993 and Hunting BRAE Limited was appointed following a competition for a seven year period that expired on 31 March 20000. The GOCO arrangements have proved to be a considerable success.

The Ministry of Defence awarded the contract for management of the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) to the AWE Management Limited consortium on 01 December 2000. The consortium comprises Serco Limited, British Nuclear Fuels plc and Lockheed Martin Corporation. The contract will commence on 1 April 2000 for an initial period of 10 years. The value of the contract is approximately 2.2 billion pounds sterling.

Reviewing Hunting Brae's seven years as manager of AWE, Robin Bradley, Hunting Brae's chief executive, concluded that: "Perhaps our greatest success was in delivering the Trident programme to time and cost, whilst gaining Nuclear Site Licences, both tasks were individually thought to be impossible in the time scale. Together with AWE's employees, we have safely retired from service the United Kingdom's oldest nuclear weapon, the WE177. In spite of some alarmist and misleading media stories, instigated by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament recently, AWE now has an excellent safety record and is an example to the rest of industry."

Hunting Brae, the company that has managed the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) for seven years failed to receive a contract renewal just a fortnight before the Environment Agency announced successful prosecution of the company for radioactive pollution of the Thames.

The EA's case against Hunting Brae was the first time a nuclear installation had been charged and prosecuted under the Radioactive Substances Act 1993. "It's the first situation where we've found the combination of circumstances that have led us to prosecute under the RSA," an EA spokesperson told edie. "We certainly haven't shrunk from using it in the past." The spokesperson confirmed that the Agency would like all firms to take note of the ruling and to see it as proof that the EA will use the legislation. In February 1999, EA officials discovered evidence of unauthorised discharges of tritiated groundwater into the Aldermaston stream that feeds into the Thames. The Agency was alerted to the illegal discharges by a Hunting Brae employee. The tritium discharges began in April 1997 and continued until February 1999.