SembMarine buys more Gravifloat stake

Sembcorp Marine has acquired an additional 44% equity stake in Gravifloat for $38 million. This will bring the company’s stake in Gravifloat to 56%.

Under the agreement, the company will eventually increase its stake by a further 44% to 100% through an equity purchase at the same price.

Gravifloat designs and holds patents for a suite of re-deployable, modularised solutions based on its near-shore floating yet gravity-based LNG terminal solutions. It is an alternative to existing onshore and floating LNG facilities.

The Gravifloat-designed facilities are steel-based modularised structures, with the floatable modules fully constructed and tested at a shipyard.

Sembcorp Marine’s President & CEO Wong Weng Sun said: “Our increased stake in Gravifloat underlines our confidence in Gravifloat designs to provide globally competitive solutions for our customers. It also reflects our strategy to broaden and deepen the Group’s range of proprietary designs and solutions to develop new state-of-the-art facilities for the fast evolving LNG and LPG industries.”

According to SembMarine, Gravifloat terminals offer a more cost-competitive solution compared with FSRUs (floating, storage and regasification units), FLNG and land terminals and can be designed for both liquefaction and receiving terminal services.

The company had announced its initial 12% acquisition in Gravifloat on June 2, 2014. With its holding increased to 56%, Gravifloat will become a subsidiary of the Company following the completion of the acquisition.

Sembcorp Marine explained that the acquisition enables the company to gain significant control of Gravifloat, and expand the Group’s products and services by moving into offshore gas processing units.