Equipment: Sparrows are specialists in offshore engineering
Sparrows, the Aberdeen-based offshore lifting engineering specialist, has signed a new multi-million pound contract with BP Exploration.
The contract will see the company provide all crane and lifting engineering services on BP's 26 UK offshore installations and at their 4 onshore terminals through until 2015.
The deal, worth in excess of £15 m per year means that Sparrows will have had an unbroken relationship spanning 40 years with BP in the North Sea. The contract will also secure 140 jobs for offshore workers.
The company recently won the Queens Award for excellence in recognition of trebling their export sales.
History
It was in 1975 that Sparrows sent its first offshore crane operator to work in BP's Forties Field, and Sparrows has been BP's principal offshore lifting engineering and crane operating/maintenance contractor in the North Sea ever since.
The contract secures 76 jobs at Sparrows in the BP 'core' team on and offshore, but also provides work for many other Sparrows employees locally.
Sparrows Executive Director, Eastern Hemisphere, Richard Wilson said: “Winning the new BP contract was an important measure of Sparrows ability to adapt to new client needs in the rapidly changing world energy market".
"In no way is the new contract a simple renewal of the previous deal - it represents new ways of delivering greater value to BP, while still maintaining the highest standards of safety and equipment integrity which are vital for safe offshore lifting operations."
"Sparrows 40 year partnership with BP is an example of all that is best about what the oil and gas industry has brought to Aberdeen," said Sparrows chief executive, Doug Sedge.
“The company they helped us to create now employs around 1500 people worldwide, over 900 of them in Aberdeen and offshore UK, and is one of Aberdeen's big success stories on the world energy services stage."
Sparrows received the Queen's Award for Enterprise in 2010 for export development, having more than trebled export sales to £78 million annually from total sales of £165 million.
