OEG Offshore strengthens offshore renewables offer by acquiring Manor Renewable Energy

Global offshore services business OEG Offshore today (Tuesday 25 Jan) “massively broadened” its renewables capability by snapping up Manor Renewable Energy.

Acquisition of the temporary power, engineering and vessel business, which boasts group turnover in the region of £30m, advances OEG’s fast‐paced strategy to deliver integrated offshore service packages across the world.

Bringing Manor Renewables’ expertise, reputation and track record into the OEG fold instantly enhances its topside offering following its purchases last year of offshore welfare leaders Pegasus Welfare Solutions and offshore radio‐communications specialists Fern Communications.

At the same time the purchase of Hughes Subsea Services last autumn expanded its subsea position in renewables installations and maintenance.

For Manor Renewable Energy (MRE), joining the OEG group supports its plans to grow to a £60m‐turnover business as it eyes the “huge opportunities” to build on the foundations laid over the last 9 years; with overseas operations experience across Europe and more recently, Taiwan, MRE is looking to extend its presence in the Far East, as well as breaking into the US market.

Dan Greeves, OEG’s head of renewables, said: “We see Manor Renewables Energy as a focal point to build our topside business and key to our strategy of becoming fully integrated. It is our largest acquisition to date and fits into developing a full set of topside services alongside PWS and Fern. MRE also benefits from a surveys division, which adds strength to our subsea services with Hughes Subsea, that we acquired in November.”

“We are already bidding for projects with multiple services on offshore wind projects and, by our acquisition strategy, can offer technical experts in each of the fields in the package.  “We will now integrate MRE’s services into our offering such that the client can choose a full service or separate bundles, but if we are going to do integrated services, we do it wholeheartedly – and do what we do best.”

Portland, Dorset‐based MRE is best known for is temporary power solutions, with its biggest contract on Orsted’s Hornsea 2 project and the support and maintenance of over 150 generators offshore.

Former mariners Eric Briar and Toby Mead founded MRE in 2013, initially focusing on temporary power solutions for the burgeoning offshore wind sector, before expanding into engineering and vessel solutions following their purchase of the Dorset based shipyard, Manor Marine.

Now, with bases in Portland, Portsmouth, Glasgow and Hull, the business has five owned specialist offshore support vessels and two chartered, including a dynamically positioned vessel; plans for a hydrogen vessel are in the early stages, while it is also working with industry partners on autonomous vessels.

Eric Briar said: “We are pleased to see this acquisition completed and look forward to strengthening MRE within the overall OEG group through access to accelerated investment plans and using OEG’s global platform of locations across six continents to internationalise our business.”

“Furthermore, we believe that there will be synergies for our survey divisions with OEG’s subsea offering, Hughes Subsea, which opens an array of interesting projects.”

“We have developed a strong position in the construction side of offshore renewables and wish to build upon those foundations to develop an increased proportion of our revenues from the operations and maintenance part of an offshore wind projects lifecycle.”

Toby Mead added: “One only has to review last week’s Scotwind announcement of 17 projects and up to 25GW of capacity to see the ambition of the market and the speed at which it now moves.  Ten of those projects are due to use floating technology and being part of OEG allows us, in combination with other group companies to provide a complete package of services across survey, subsea and topside solutions; it’s an exciting time.”

All 230 MRE workers would remain with the group with growth predicted.