ABERDEEN company Imes Group has announced the sale of one of its subsidiaries, Imes Strategic Support (ISS), to Lockheed Martin UK (LMUK), a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin Corporation, of America.
Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
Imes Group, which employs more than 200 people, delivers technical engineering services to sectors that depend for their performance on the integrity of critical assets: defence, aerospace, oil and gas and nuclear.
The group successfully transferred its oil and gas expertise to the defence sector, and formed ISS, which operates from Helensburgh, to focus on delivering services to the UK Trident nuclear-submarine programme.
The £20million-plus turnover group will continue to focus on growing its business in asset-integrity services to the oil and gas, marine and nuclear industries through Imes in the UK and Imes Inc in America.
With increasing demand in the North Sea and other oil and gas provinces worldwide for its services, Imes Group anticipates strong growth and plans to create jobs across the remaining operating companies in the next 12 months. All 87 employees of ISS will join Lockheed Martin, which has a long history of involvement with the strategic weapons programmes in the US and UK.
Imes Group chairman Melfort Campbell will be contracted part-time by LMUK to support the transition.