Scottish Enterprise Grant for Subsea Testing Centre

 A new centre of excellence for testing emerging technologies in the subsea sector is to be established with support from Scottish Enterprise.

Balmoral Offshore Engineering, based in Aberdeen, is creating a new open access hyperbaric pressure testing facility for the oil and gas supply chain, and specifically for the subsea sector.

Scottish Enterprise is supporting the project with a £1m research and development grant to the company, which will invest £1.5m in the project. The centre will be available for large companies and SMEs to use.

The project will more than double the capacity of large-scale open access pressure testing vessels from two vessels to five in Scotland.

The first minister Nicola Sturgeon  made the announcement ahead of the National Economic Forum in Inverness.

She said: “This specialist facility will allow new products to be developed and existing ones to be tested and improved. This will bring huge benefits in developing and supporting emerging technologies in the oil and gas industry.”

The project will create Scotland’s first fully open access ultra-deep water hyperbaric test facility which will enable testing for products that are to be exported to international markets.

Jim Milne CBE, chairman and managing director, Balmoral Group, said: “We are delighted to have secured this investment from Scottish Enterprise, an organisation we have been collaborating successfully with for many years.

“The establishment of Europe’s leading hyperbaric test centre in Aberdeen further strengthens the city’s position as a centre of excellence for the global subsea industry while also opening up opportunities to work with the renewables and defence sectors.”