JUST eight wind turbine jackets for a huge wind farm 10 miles off the Fife coast will be built at local yards crying out for work, unions said today.

Reports that the Neart Na Gaoithe is commissioning such a small volume of work from Scottish yards were received as the latest blow for the troubled BiFab company.

The yards at Burntisland and Methil were occupied by workers in 2017 after being threatened with closure.

A subsequent government bailout and a new Canadian owner failed to see off the eventual mothballing of the sites.

In a joint statement issued today, GMB Scotland secretary Gary Smith and his Unite counterpart Pat Rafferty said: “The prospect of just eight turbine jackets coming to Fife while the vast majority are built in Indonesia is scandalous. 

“This is a £2 billion Scottish offshore wind project that will be largely delivered by cheap foreign labour and then shipped on diesel burning barges to the Fife coast.

“The renewables lobby and every politician that has promised a green jobs revolution must be cringing.”

They said the contract would offer “a very small crumb of comfort” to BiFab workers through creating “some desperately needed jobs for a period of time,” but blamed an “absence of any proper industrial planning” for the failure to secure more work.

A Scottish government spokeswoman said: “The Scottish government is committed to doing everything within its devolved competence to increase Scottish content in offshore wind projects.

“We continue to call upon UK government to consider how the CfD process can be restructured to encourage wider use of the UK supply chain.”