Unie News

FG International Holland BV, the Dutch Special Lifting company, has recently applied a brand new construction called FG Single Pole Lifter. Willtéco was awarded the high profile job to construct and exchange gearboxes on a jack-up platform in IJmuiden, The Netherlands. While the jack-up does have two sizeable deck cranes, both cranes cannot fully reach the enclosed area where the gearboxes are located. As an alternative to putting a huge land based crane on the quayside, FG built…

Rolls-Royce has won contracts worth $76 million to supply design and equipment packages for nine offshore service vessels which will be built in four different shipyards for owners in Brazil, France, Norway and the U.S. The ship designs and packages of Rolls-Royce equipment will be supplied in 2002 and 2003, and the shipyards, located in Brazil, Denmark and Norway are scheduled to deliver the vessels in 2003 and 2004. There are currently 71 offshore service vessels of the type UT-Design from Rolls Royce on order or under construction around the world. Five of the latest orders are for the popular UT 755 supply vessel. The Aker Promar yard in Brazil will build two…

It is little secret that as offshore oil production moves further from shore, the boats that service these offshore units must be bigger, stronger and more capable than their ancestors. Here's a peak at emerging technologies and the boats that house them. The technology to cost efficiently discover and recover oil and gas in increasingly deeper part of the Gulf of Mexico has quickly led to the development of bigger, stronger and more ruggedly equipped Offshore Service Vessels, not only on drawings boards but operating on the waterways. The discovery of oil and gas fields such as Auger, Marlim and Mars, have among others, highlighted the vast potential for drilling success and the inadequacy of the current fleet of OSVs to perform the job as cost effectively as possible.

Smit Internationale has completed the acquisition of Unie van Redding- en Sleepdienst (URS) from Bofort N.V., Antwerp. The agreement is subject to the customary due diligence investigations. SMIT acquired Bofort's 50.1 percent share in Unie van Redding- en Sleepdienst (URS), Antwerp. SMIT already has a minority interest of 49.9 percent in URS and will as a consequence of this transaction acquire the entire share capital of URS. URS is a supplier of towage, salvage and transport services on the Scheldt river and in and around the Belgian waters. The transaction is the first step of the implementation of the strategic re-orientation during which all participations have been assessed on management control, strategic fit and synergies within the SMIT group.