An Australian shipyard has completed the building and fitting out of four new inshore patrol boats for the Armed Forces of Malta and will hand them over shortly.

The 21-metre boats were built by Austal and have been conducting sea trials.

They will replace two Swift-class boats and a Bremse-class patrol boat which are to be withdrawn from the Maltese fleet. The Swifts had been donated to Malta second-hand by the American government in 1971 while the former East German Bremse patrol boat was bought from Germany after German reunification.

The new €9.3m Austal boats, partly financed by the EU, were built to Maltese specifications and will be tasked with patroling the harbours and coastal waters. They will be equipped with machine guns, fire-fighting and rescue equipment.

The new boats have a stern ramp for the launching and retrieval of a rigid hull inflatable boat, as is the case with the offshore boats in the AFM fleet, the American-built Protector class P-51 and P-52 and the bigger Italian modified Diciotti class P-61.

The four boats will be shipped to Malta on a cargo ship.