Keppel Verolme moving into new business areas

Aug. 1, 2003
Keppel Verolme is poised to enter new busi-ness segments, including rig building, new-build completion, servicing of LNG carriers, and conversion and upgrading of FPSO/FSO projects.

Keppel Verolme is poised to enter new busi-ness segments, including rig building, new-build completion, servicing of LNG carriers, and conversion and upgrading of FPSO/FSO projects.

The company, former Verolme Botlek yard in Rotterdam and servicing clients from the North Sea, is now looking south to service clients in other locations such as West Africa.

Its enhanced strength comes from becoming a new member of the Keppel Offshore & Marine group that is focused on providing high value-added services in sectors such as offshore drilling rigs and production platforms, FPSO/FSO, tugboats and offshore support vessels, ship repair, and conversions.

As a Keppel Offshore & Marine unit, Keppel Verolme can build on its extensive experience in managing complex projects by leveraging the group's network of engineering and project management support to grow in the segments it chooses to compete in.

The company is joining forces with sister companies Keppel Shipyard and Keppel FELS to bid for complex projects such as conversion of and newbuild decommissioning vessels.

Another example is the development of a new design for a dedicated jackup, which involves joint marketing and engineering efforts of Keppel Verolme and Offshore Technology Development in Singapore, another Keppel group company responsible for the design of the jacking system, legs, and hull.

At the NorShipping exhibition in Oslo in June this year, it shared a common booth with Keppel Shipyard, demonstrating to its customers its ability to provide global service. Its cooperation emphasizes Keppel Verolme's continual commitment to the ship repair market in Northwest Europe.

Best known as a maritime contractor to the offshore and marine industry in the North Sea region, Keppel Verolme has been focused on conversion of offshore-related rigs and vessels in its core business and ship repair as supporting business.

In recent years, Keppel Verolme has strengthened its market share in the North Sea by successfully moving into the competitive market of upgrading and conversion of offshore support vessels other than jackup and semisubmersible units.

These vessels include seismic, pipe laying, deepwater stone dumpers, crane vessels, and jumbo dredgers. A recent project successfully delivered to its owners, is the deepwater free fall pipe vessel Rocknes. The conversion allowed the previous self-unloading bulk carrier to precisely dump stones up to 1,200-m water depth on full dynamic positioning. Simultaneously with this demanding project, regular upgrading and special survey works were executed on board of the semisubmersibles Stena Spey and Arctic III and the jackup Ensco 92.