Offshore catering and service firm Entier says it has a vision to more than double its turnover to £50million by 2015 after picking up its latest contract.
The Aberdeen-based business, set up in 2008, said yesterday it had won a £7million contract with Apache North Sea for services on facilities the US firm recently bought from ExxonMobil.
Entier will provide catering and hotel services on the Alpha and Bravo platforms in the Beryl field, catering and cleaning at the Sage gas plant and catering at Apache’s Grampian House office, in addition to work it already has on the operator’s five Forties field platforms and Dyce offices.
Managing director Peter Bruce said other new contracts at the firm would see it turn over £22.5million and clear its start-up debts by its September year-end.
He added: “We have been quite targeted in what we have been going for.
“We would like more North Sea offshore platform business and to vary our clients a bit more and get some more operators.
“We also want to grow the business in areas where we have capability and resources to be able to do that and where clients want us to go. That is the strategy rather than running around. Our vision is to turn over £50million by 2014-15.”
Entier was the brainchild of Mr Bruce, a former business director of ESS who previously worked offshore as a chef, and Mike Reilly, who ran the Olive Tree restaurant and a small catering company turning over £1.9million.
They decided to take the catering company into the offshore business. With a staff of eight, the firm won its first contract with Apache on two of its Forties platforms. They also won two ship contracts with Oceanteam.
In its first year of trading, the firm saw its bank funding pulled, because of the banking crisis, and a major contract lost when Oceanteam Power and Umbilical went out of business losing it £90,000, giving it an overall loss of £400,000.
Entier now has 34 offshore and onshore contracts and, while it has a lot of work with Apache, the group is not responsible for more than 50% of Entier’s revenue.
“We have a passionate belief in food services,” said Mr Bruce.
“Now, after three-and-a-bit years, we have 17 offshore contracts – 12 of them in the UK – and 17 onshore contracts in Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire.
“It is exciting times. It’s all about food and communications. We are the only company to use Scottish beef offshore. We also only use branded products. It is more expensive, but it’s value for money.”
The firm now employs about 400 people, with 300 of those offshore.
In addition to catering services, it runs facility management: from laundry to managing recreation facilities from gyms to snooker tables and helicopter administration.
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