Offshore services provider North Star is set to nearly double the size of its fleet as it seeks new wind contract opportunities in the North Sea and further afield.
The expansion by the company, which is based in Aberdeen, is being supported by a £425 million funding package for the addition of 40 hybrid service operation vessels (SOVs) by 2040. North Star's current 48-strong fleet includes 41 infrastructure support vessels and three SOVs in operation in the North Sea.
The 137-tear-old business is owned by Swiss-headquartered private equity firm Partners Group, which bought the company in a bid to benefit from the surge in offshore windfarm investment. Originally established to service the fisheries industry, North Star has supported the energy sector for the past four decades and provides services to more than 50 North Sea oil and gas installations.
READ MORE: World’s biggest floating offshore wind farm gets go-ahead
Chief financial officer Fraser Dobbie said the £425m funding injection highlights the attractiveness of North Star's business model as it transitions to become a leading player in Europe’s SOV sector.
"The infusion of capital from a combination of institutional and bank investors secures access to the capital required to support our continued growth, and provides validation from the lender market of the excellent progress we have made on our strategic journey to build our business for sustainable, long-term success in the offshore wind market," he said.
“For potential clients, this committed debt package provides certainty on our ability to deliver vessels as outlined in our tender bids, financially de-risking the process completely. This provides us with a competitive edge and a superior ability to turnaround high quality SOV newbuild programmes more rapidly, ensuring the best value and service in the industry."
The committed financial package of £225m includes term facilities from existing lender IFM Investors plus expenditure and working capital resources from banks including ABN AMRO, AIB, NAB, Royal Bank of Scotland and RBC. The facilities also have "accordion capacity" for a further £200m in funding, allowing North Star to upsize as required.
READ MORE: Scotland's largest offshore wind farm now fully operational
Employing more than 1,400 onshore personnel and seafaring crew, the company has bases in Aberdeen, Lowestoft, Newcastle, and Hamburg. In addition to its multi-purpose ships it has three of four newbuild SOVs in operation at the Dogger Bank Wind Farm, with the final asset scheduled for delivery early next year.
North Star also has a further four newbuilds underway – an SOV for EnBW's He Dreiht wind farm in Germany, another for Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy at the East Anglia THREE project, and the first two of its larger commissioning SOVs to support the growing European offshore wind market.
READ MORE: North Star expansion can inspire engineering and technical sector job seekers in Aberdeen
Partners Group acquired North Star for an undisclosed from private equity group Basalt Infrastructure Partners in January 2022. That deal came four years after Basalt took over the business from Aberdeen-based Craig Group.
The company operates the largest fleet of emergency response vessels in Europe and is also the UK's largest employer of offshore cadets. Since 1996 it has trained hundreds of deck and engineering seafarers, investing an average of £1m annually.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel