FRESH claims that the new owner of a Teesside ship repair yard is stripping it of assets have been denied by the company.

In November Southampton firm A&P Holdings was accused of asset-stripping the former Cammell Laird yard in South Bank. But A&P chief executive David Ring denied this, saying the firm hoped to reopen the yard.

Now it has emerged that one of the yard's cranes has been removed, and insiders fear this could spell the end for the ship repair business on Teesside.

Eric Welsh, a former owner of the yard, has repeatedly said he wants to buy the yard, insisting he can make it viable. "You don't take cranes away - anyone with any kind of knowledge knows that is the case. They have stripped everything else away. It would take an awful lot of money to even think about bringing the cranes back - I know because I brought them from the Tyne in the first place," said Mr Welsh.

But David Skentelbery, managing director of ship care and products for A&P, insisted that the mobile crane was removed to be used in another yard and would be returned to Teesside.

"Our intentions are to start operations on the Teesside yard later this year. We are working actively on our strategy to open up the ship repair yard," he said.

The yard was mothballed last year when it went into receivership with the loss of 110 jobs. It was bought by A&P in September.