Peterson delivers positive performance with ongoing investment

Revenue was up on 2016 by 23% at £278 million, with profit of £0.8 million, down £0.2 million on 2016.

The Peterson business is seeing recovery in its core oil and gas market, driven by new contract awards including Shell, Chrysaor, Neptune and a number of service companies, together with growth in its international businesses and an underlying growth in activity levels. There have also been new contract awards in its broader energy and industrial markets including renewables, decommissioning and automotive.

In 2017 Peterson also made significant investments across the business including; establishing a new quayside in Aberdeen Harbour to service new business, continuing to invest heavily in developing its international business and in start-up costs for new contracts. These start-up costs, together with business rate increases of around £1 million had a significant effect on the financial results in 2017 but position the company well for the next phase of growth and opportunities as market conditions improve.

Headcount increased by 5% this year, with more than 1100 employees now part of the team supporting international clients.

Commenting on the Group’s performance Erwin A. Kooij, CEO of Peterson said:

“Peterson has delivered a positive performance in what continues to be a challenging time for the energy sector but one where we see our clients embracing our new working models. In 2017 global E&P spending grew by 9%, the first increase in several years, however our clients continue to seek efficiencies across the supply chain and we are well placed to respond to this with new, innovative solutions that enable collaboration, pooling, sharing and materials management.

“2017 saw the launch of the CNNS Pool (Central & Northern North Sea). Peterson has been working in close partnership with a number of operators to support the creation of the CNNS Pool to facilitate vessel and other resource sharing through a formal pool arrangement. This collaborative approach is based on Peterson’s successful SNS Pool model, established in 1993 in the Netherlands for nine operators and now operating from April 2017 in Aberdeen, with good opportunity to extend to additional operators.”

Erwin Kooij added: “We’ve seen strong demand for our decommissioning services across the UK. Our purpose built facilities at Dales Voe and Greenhead Base in Shetland are handling the decommissioning of the 12 000 t Buchan Alpha structure; and we are facilitating the decommissioning of the Leman platform from our new site in Great Yarmouth.

“We see good opportunities internationally, and invested around £2m in the period exporting our logistics models to new territories. This included investment in our shore based facilities in Trinidad and Tobago where we were awarded a major contract to support BP, and new contracts with Shell and Atlantic Drilling, seeing our in-country team growing to 140 people.

“We continue to develop our service offering to support customers in the Mediterranean and North Africa and significant investment has been made in expanding the geographic footprint of our procurement business 80:20 and we are now operating in Malta, the Netherlands, the USA, Canada and Norway.”

Erwin concluded: “Our people are fundamental to our ability to deliver operational excellence and we remain committed to attracting, retaining and developing the right people. We increased our headcount by 5% in the last year to more than 1100; and we currently employ 550 people in the Aberdeen area, up by 6% following recent contract wins. We made a number of key appointments to further strengthen our management team and support the next phase of the company's growth.

“Keeping our people safe remains our number one priority, and we will work hard to maintain our sector leading safety performance. We are proud that our personal responsibility and core values enables a culture of care within our company, enabling all our people to feel comfortable and confident to challenge unsafe behaviours and stop the job. We were awarded the ISO 50001 Energy Management standard, aligned with improving our environmental performance. The efforts of all our employees were recognised at the 2017 Offshore Safety Awards, where we collected the award for Innovation in Safety for our innovative safety procedures which are driving stronger employee engagement and reduced incidents across our operations. We were also delighted to win the 2017 Sector Innovation Award at the 2017 P&J Gold Awards showcasing our team’s hard work.

“The Peterson Control Union Group, a family-owned company, reported overall a robust global Group result in 2017, and as we approach our centenary in 2020, our strong balance sheet, without significant loan capital which is less than 3% of our group total balance sheet, it enables us to take a long view, invest for the future and allows our clients and employees to trust in Peterson.”

Read the article online at: https://www.oilfieldtechnology.com/drilling-and-production/02102018/peterson-delivers-positive-performance-with-ongoing-investment/