Major move in bid to bring decom work to the Port of Dundee.

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 brokered by Dundeecom, a and entrepreneurship – to develop this public/private partnership between with and we believe with Forth Ports and Dundee City Council, DC Thomson and everybody else we met on our last visit Forth Ports to position the city as a that we have found the right fit. international decom centre of

“For us, Dundee is a combination of excellence. two things – It it how the site is Dundeecom CEO Callum Falconer orientated towards the central North hailed the AF Gruppen deal and said he Sea where the facilities are, and it is the was confident it was just the first step in physical opportunities to, so to speak, a major new industry for the city. copy, paste Vats.” He said: “In order to create a hub we

The group’s Vats facility in Rogaland needed to have a catalyst – we needed to handles major offshore installations and bring in somebody with serious decom is believed to be the North Sea’s most credentials and establish some sort of advanced decom base. relationship with them.

Forth Ports is currently in the midst of “Initially I thought it would be a a £10 million upgrade of Dundee’s contractual relationship but this is a Prince Charles V Wharf. business partnership which has

The new AF Dundee base will take exceeded all my expectations.” advantage of the city’s deep water Forth Ports chief executive Charles berthing capability and what will soon Hammond said the heads of terms be the UK’s strongest quayside with agreement was a major milestone. Europe’s largest capacity heavy lift “We are already investing in crane. infrastructure,” Mr Hammond said.

The heads of terms agreement was “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