Ardent to Refocus on Core Business

Emergency management and wreck removal company Ardent plans to refocus its strategy away from decommissioning towards its core business of emergency management and wreck removal. 

The company, created in 2015 through the merger of Svitzer Salvage and Titan Salvage, started its business by offering a comprehensive portfolio of services ranging from traditional salvage to a full range of emergency management services, project-related work, offshore decommissioning and underwater services.

Its decommissioning business included removal of topsides, substructures as well as plugging of wells and their abandonment, dismantling of platform structures and their disposal as well as seabed remediation.

The company did not disclose the reason behind its decision.

However, there are many challenges in the decommissioning of offshore infrastructure including high costs, shifting time-tables as well as the duration of projects which tend to be prolonged due to various factors, including regulatory delays. The North Sea and the Gulf of Mexico remain the top candidate regions for decommissioning jobs as aging platforms are retired and approved for dismantling. Nevertheless, the progress in this sector is pretty slow, even though 2019 has been marked as a bumper year for decommissioning jobs with 23 projects signed off for dismantling.

Ardent will also move its headquarter from Houston, USA, to Ijmuiden, the Netherlands, where the new CEO, Oliver Timofei, and CFO, Jens Jaeger, are based. The moves have been ascribed to the desire to make Ardent more customer-centric.

The company said it plans to continue to provide its Global Preparedness Cover offerings as well as its OPA90 SMFF services for the USA.

“Ardent is well-positioned to build its position as one of the global, market leading emergency management and wreck removal companies. We have over the last two years successfully executed on average over 25 major cases per year,” Oliver Timofei, CEO, who previously served as Vice President – Emergency Management, commented.

“Ardent is committed to successfully execute all current decommissioning projects in implementation and going forward will focus selectively on subsea and decom projects that fit with Ardent’s core business.”

Ardent has four major response hubs in the Netherlands, USA, Singapore and Australia as well as offices in Korea, Brazil, South Africa and the UK.