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Sterling sell out to Seacor
The news broke around March 8th that Stirling
Shipping had sold their ships for $100milllion plus debt to Seacor. Stirling were formed
by Harrisons (Clyde) a Glasgow based ship-owner in the 1970s. The company built four small
platform ships to their own design and made them available for work. The first job they
got was the use of one of the ships for a lager commercial.
Since then they have had variable fortunes, but
seemed to turn around when they purchased the Star Offshore fleet. This expansion was
followed by a steady influx of new vessels, the last to enter service being the Stirling
Iona. Two further large anchor-handlers are being built in UK.
It is rumoured in Aberdeen that Seacor intend to
leave the current management in place, so the outside world may not see any change. It
would now appear that all UK based supply vessel companies have American or Norwegian
owners apart from Specialist Marine Services, and that the only remaining British owned
and managed support vessel company is BUE.
Tidewater continue to purchase ships
latest news amongst the brokers in Aberdeen is
that Tidewater have purchased the Torm Eagle and Torm Osprey, two KMAR 404s owned by Torm
and formally managed by Gulf Offshore.
In addition to these vessels Tidewater has
apparently ordered five VS 486 from the Yantai Raffles yard in China. One can only say
that their proposed action last year to spend a lot of money is being fulfilled. European
supply vessel owners who sometimes look down a bit on their competitors in the US Gulf
should remember that Tidewater claim to have developed the UT704, and at one stage around
25 years ago owned the most powerful anchor-handlers in the world.
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