The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
City gears up for decom hub
New joint venture company will build major decom base at Port of Dundee
A working group will today begin planning for a major new multi-millionpound decommissioning facility at the Port of Dundee.
A delegation from Norwegian industrial giant AF Gruppen was in the city yesterday for the signing of a heads of terms agreement with Dundeecom to establish a new joint venture company.
AF Dundee will work towards establishing a new state-of-the-art decommissioning facility at the port with the capacity to handle the largest offshore decom projects.
Erwin Lammertink, vice-president, commercial and business development at AF Gruppen Offshore Decom, said his firm had significant experience in the sector and would look to “copy, paste” its existing facility at Vats, Norway, at Dundee.
“Developing a UK facility was always one of our strategic initiatives,” Mr Lammertink said.
“We have been looking for the right partner – with the right mindset, values and entrepreneurship – to develop this with and we believe with Forth Ports and everybody else we met on our last visit that we have found the right fit.
“For us, Dundee is a combination of two things – It it how the site is orientated towards the central North Sea where the facilities are, and it is the physical opportunities to, so to speak, copy, paste Vats.”
The group’s Vats facility in Rogaland handles major offshore installations and is believed to be the North Sea’s most advanced decom base.
Forth Ports is currently in the midst of a £10 million upgrade of Dundee’s Prince Charles V Wharf.
The new AF Dundee base will take advantage of the city’s deep water berthing capability and what will soon be the UK’s strongest quayside with Europe’s largest capacity heavy lift crane.
The heads of terms agreement was brokered by Dundeecom, a public/private partnership between Dundee City Council, DC Thomson and Forth Ports to position the city as a international decom centre of excellence.
Dundeecom CEO Callum Falconer hailed the AF Gruppen deal and said he was confident it was just the first step in a major new industry for the city.
He said: “In order to create a hub we needed to have a catalyst – we needed to bring in somebody with serious decom credentials and establish some sort of relationship with them.
“Initially I thought it would be a contractual relationship but this is a business partnership which has exceeded all my expectations.”
Forth Ports chief executive Charles Hammond said the heads of terms agreement was a major milestone.
“We are already investing in infrastructure,” Mr Hammond said.
“And we are committed to investing more to establish Dundee as the UK’s leading decom facility.”
Ellis Watson, executive chairman of DC Thomson Media and a director of Dundeecom, said the deal was a “massive endorsement” of Dundee’s credibility as a major decom player.
He added: “Dundeecom was formed precisely for deals just like this, and it’s a credit to Forth Ports and the city council that they can collaborate in this way to show the rest of the world we mean business.”
Developing a UK facility was always one of our strategic initiatives. ERWIN LAMMERTINK AF GRUPPEN OFFSHORE DECOM