This year the UK-office of Deep Sea Mooring (DSM) - a Vryhof company - has considerably strengthened its presence in the offshore energy hub Aberdeen, Scotland, with the opening of a strategically extremely convenient deep water quayside facility. This follows the opening of the UK office in April 2017.

The Port of Aberdeen is an economic driver for the whole region. As a global leader in providing secure, innovative and high quality mooring solutions to mainly E&P (exploration and production) companies and drilling operators, DSM’s aim is to become a strong local partner for its international clients in that area, by delivering excellence in the broadest sense of the word. The office is headed by UK Managing Director Mo Tafazzoly and was established more than a year ago in response to growing demand for DSM’s services and solutions, across the North Sea.

“We started our search for a suitable base in the middle of last year and are very pleased to have found this unique facility with indoor and outdoor storage areas,” said Mo Tafazzoly. “There is minimal impact in terms of tidal dependency. As a consequence, an offshore support vessel such as an AHV does not have to wait for hours before she can berth or leave for sea again. Other operators in nearby ports have problems because of draft restrictions.

This saves a lot of valuable time for our clients. Another advantage is that the maintenance shed for storing, handling and maintaining mooring equipment on the premises is only 30 meters from the quayside, considerably reducing the time of loading/offloading operations. We can mobilize our equipment almost immediately.”

At the start of Q2, DSM had already received two large shipments of mooring equipment and the majority of this equipment has already been deployed offshore in support of one of DSM’s clients’ semi-submersible rigs in the UKSC, with another major mobilization in progress.

Mo Tafazzoly added, “We have already recruited around 10 very experienced local personnel over the past few months, including a base manager, marine manager, mooring technicians, naval architects, a draughtsman and a logistic lead. It is exciting to see them using all their experience combined with our full range of capabilities to support clients who are looking for the most cost-efficient mooring solutions. Given the many leads we are following up right now, we certainly expect to double this number of employees in 2019. There are exciting times ahead for us. Although DSM’s main clients are rig owners and oil companies, the floating offshore wind sector is also becoming more and more important.”