The Swan Hunter shipyard could yet see the return of shipbuilding work after owner Jaap Kroese said he would be bidding for a contract with a Scandinavian company.

Just two weeks since the RFA Lyme Bay vessel was towed away from Swan's Wallsend yard in an unfinished state after rows over costs with the MoD, Mr Kroese is showing interest in a new shipbuilding contract.

And he also said yesterday that managers from his yard had been hired by Swiss firm Allseas to work on a £200m contract on its Audacia pipe-laying vessel in Rotterdam - a contract which Swan's had itself tried to win with the hope that it would create 1,500 jobs in the North-East.

The Dutchman said he was pleased they had been able to find work so quickly, and that he believed there were more than five years' worth of contracts at Allseas which they could potentially be involved in.

Back in Wallsend, Mr Kroese said if the Scandinavian work came to fruition, Swan's would be a sub-contractor to a Dutch company called Centraal Staal, and said he would find out if it was going to happen this autumn.

He said: "It's the sort of thing we've been looking at for a long time, though there is nothing definite yet. We will know something in October/November time."

On his managers' new contracts with Allseas, he said: "Our managers are in Rotterdam working on the Audacia.

"It's good for them that they found work. There is one to one-and-a-half years' work there on that vessel, and after that another four years' work in the yard." While considering the possibility of shipbuilding work, Mr Kroese said he would not inquire about breaking a ship for the Ministry of Defence.

The yard owner has already said he will not offer any payment for HMS Intrepid, which has lain decommissioned in Portsmouth Harbour for five years.

And now he has asserted that if the Disposal Services Agency want Swan's to break up Intrepid, they will have to contact him.

The DSA is aware that Swan's is currently the only yard in the UK with the licences required to carry out shipbreaking work, but believes others will soon gain the necessary permissions to compete with Mr Kroese. He said: "It's a crying shame that there are 10 people (at the DSA) looking at this problem, for a year and a half, and they have still not made a decision. We can't bid in the way they want us to bid. Nobody in the world will pay them to break up ships."