Fast-growing subsea installation firm Ocean Installer is looking to recruit 20-30 people this year after taking a minimum five-year lease on offices in Aberdeen.
The Stavanger-based firm, set up in January last year by a team of former Subsea 7 staff and backed by private equity, is taking over the entire 10,000 square feet Innovation Centre premises at Bridge of Don.
It has also appointed a UK managing director, Martin Sisley, and hopes the offices – to be renamed Ocean Installer House – will be home to more than 100 staff by the end of next year.
This would include the company’s finance functions. The firm, which has just completed its first UK North Sea project, an export pipeline between the Rowan Norway jackup rig and a shuttle tanker on Xcite Energy’s Bentley field, said it was now aggressively bidding for more work.
Mr Sisley said: “The lease is a statement of our long-term commitment to the area.
“The market is very buoyant, there are a lot of new facilities being built which will in turn create more opportunities for subsea development.
“By 2013, we hope to be an autonomous business unit of the business.
“Ocean Installer has also committed to have its global finance functions based in Aberdeen.”
Mr Sisley, who was born in Norfolk, has been in the oil and gas industry for 22 years and was previously head of business development for Saipem.
Ocean Installer, backed by private-equity group Hitecvision, has its sights set on £320million annual turnover and a stock market listing by 2015.
It has about 100 staff currently and this month picked up a major contract with Shell, worth up to £95million, for work on the Draugen field in the Norwegian Sea.