North Star secures North Sea orders worth £100m

North Star has been moving into the UK's offshore wind market

The North Sea's largest offshore support vessel operator has announced a raft of new contracts totalling more than £100m.

Aberdeen-based North Star said the deals would support new and existing clients working in the UK Continental Shelf with fast-response emergency vessels.

The company operates nearly 50 offshore infrastructure support vessels.

Its fleet covers 50 offshore oil and gas installations.

North Star has bases in Aberdeen, Newcastle and Lowestoft and employs 1,400 staff across the UK.

In a statement, the company said the latest contracts marked North Star's "most sizeable" emergency response rescue vessel (ERRV) orderbook in recent years.

Chief executive Matthew Gordon says the North Sea remains "a very competitive landscape"

Chief executive Matthew Gordon said the company's fleet continued to "provide a safe place in case of an incident for the thousands of people working out at sea on oil and gas assets every hour of every day, solidly across the year".

He added: "The North Sea is still a very competitive landscape, and we recognise the need for continual investment in our fleet and services to ensure we deliver value and efficiencies to remain market leading.

"As part of this, we have looked to optimise our operations with a new maritime fleet management system and begun the process of decarbonising our entire fleet."

Last year, North Star entered the UK's offshore wind market, winning contracts worth an estimated £270m to supply support vessels for the Dogger Bank project.

The firm, which was recently taken over by global private equity firm Partners Group, aims to transform the business into "a leading pan-European next generation offshore wind infrastructure services business".