Calder Engineering diversifies into offshore wind, backed by Highlands and Islands Enterprise

26 July 2010

Highlands and Islands Enterprise-backed engineering company Calder Engineering has diversified into the offshore wind industry.

Calder Engineering has been supplying cabins to the offshore oil and gas industry for a year and has recently won a contract to supply them to the renewable energy industry.

The company secured a deal to provide a suite of offshore cabins for the Sheringham Shoal wind farm project, ten miles off the Norfolk coastline.

Calder said it began designing a range of certified offshore cabins with ambitions to look at new markets after the decommissioning of the Dounreay nuclear site, from which it has traditionally sourced work.

It has been working in the oil and gas supply chain for over ten years and broke into this new market with specialist support through the Highlands and Islands Enterprise account management model.

Based at Thurso’s Ormlie Industrial Estate in the Scottish highlands, the specialist company was set up by Colin and Marena Calder in 1988.

Marena Calder, managing director of Calder Engineering, said, ‘The development of wind energy presents significant opportunities for us.

As this new market faces many of the same environmental challenges that we worked with in the oil and gas industry, we feel we are well placed with our engineering capacity and skilled workforce that is needed to seize these new significant opportunities. By moving into manufacture and fit out of offshore cabins, we have been able to build on our turnover and increase our workforce.’

Since diversifying into the new market it said it has created six new skilled full-time posts.

The company’s fitted-out cabins are designed, fabricated and fitted to customers exact requirements and can be used for a range of functions including accommodation, control rooms, laboratories and workshops.

Keith Muir, account manager for Highlands and Islands Enterprise, said, ‘The team is gaining extra skills and expertise in a highly specialised, high-value sector and their abilities will provide a valuable asset to the area’s engineering supply chain for the renewable energy sector.’

Highlands and Islands Enterprise is focused on creating infrastructure for future investment, and assisting large and small businesses with growth aspirations.

Copyright © 2010 NewNet

Tags: offshore wind

This story was published on Monday, July 26th, 2010 at 12:04 pm and is filed under Europe, companies, wind. You can follow any responses to article entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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