New Wave Media

 

Financial results to March 31, 2017 show the Aberdeenshire firm, which provides a range of engineering, technical, equipment hire, fabrication and manpower services to the renewables, interconnector and oil and gas industries, ramped up turnover from $16.9m  to $37m. EBITDA rose to $9.3m.

 

ESS said the strong financial performance was a result of previous R&D spend of more than $13m and increased adoption of its SCAR technologies for offshore renewables and interconnector projects, aligned to growth in oil and gas engineering activities.

 

ESS chairman, Mike Wilson, said: “We have concluded a number of major offshore windfarm projects and interconnector contracts in the last year and our greatly increased market share is reflected in these excellent results.”

 

Managing director Mark Gillespie said: “We continue to invest significantly in R&D which will generate future returns in 2018 and beyond, an example of which is our new trenching tool SCARJet in which we have already invested a large proportion of 2017 profits.

 

“In the current financial year we have already secured an order backlog in excess of £20m ($26m) and we are forecasting that 2018 figures will continue on an upward trajectory. Changes we made to strengthen our management team earlier this year are already paying dividends and as these results show, we are primed to push on and take ESS to the next stage of its evolution.

 

“Revenues in Europe over the last financial year grew to more than £9m ($12m) and this expansion out with our traditional UK market signals we have a strong offering which has a wider appeal across a range of major international subsea construction projects.

 

“Our focus will be on consolidating our leading position in the subsea energy sector and expanding our geographic footprint in to the Baltic, Asia and North America subsea markets.”

 

ESS has developed an impressive portfolio of patented tools which are designed, tested and manufactured at their headquarters near Banchory, Aberdeenshire. The business is regarded as a leading innovator in seabed preparation, trenching and backfill and its SCAR seabed systems – including the largest boulder clearing tool in the world - can be deployed on a variety of subsea tasks required on offshore windfarm projects and major infrastructure and interconnector projects.

 

ESS, which owns County Durham-based fabrication subsidiary MASfab, employs 40 staff but the workforce extends to more than 90 at times of peak deployment on project work.