Osbit Ltd, the offshore engineering and technology company, has delivered significant export growth as part of it achieving increased turnover and profitability in its most recent financial year.
For the 12 months ending 30 September 2017, the Northumberland-based company grew its turnover by 55 percent on the previous year with sales of £15.3m.
International sales increased by 65 percent, accounting for 66 percent of the company’s total turnover. UK sales also grew by 38 percent.
Overall profit for the year also increased on the previous year, by 59 percent to £1.3m, enabling Osbit to make bonus payments to its growing workforce, which is unusual in the recent history of the offshore energy sectors.
Osbit has also grown its workforce by 46% during the year now employing 60 people at its head office in Riding Mill and production facility at the Port of Blyth.
The results reflect Osbit’s strategy of organic growth by providing world-class solutions to a diverse range of customers across a selection of markets, which are predominantly related to the offshore oil and gas and offshore renewables sectors.
This has been evident in some of its stand out projects during the 12-month period, most notably the completion of the design and build of 600t of complex offshore systems for Helix Energy Solutions well intervention vessels.
During the period Osbit delivered a wide range of contracts to 17 other customers. This included growing its presence in the offshore wind industry, particularly for its ‘walk-to-work’ crew transfer access systems, but also for other specialist engineering solutions including an innovative hybrid monopile cleaning tool for Van Oord.
Designed to support the efficient installation of offshore wind turbine foundations, the technology was deployed to the Walney 3 & 4 offshore wind farm in the Irish Sea, where Van Oord was charged with installing 87 monopiles for Ørsted.
Osbit’s performance has continued to be set against a landscape of low oil prices, which during its 2016/17 financial year, saw a rise in the price of Brent Crude by 26 percent. This has given the company cautious optimism in its new financial year regarding demand for the design and build of systems in its core markets.
This will be supported by its board policy to grow the range of technology areas where the company is active. Osbit continues to be heavily involved in engineering research and has received further support through the government’s R&D tax relief scheme.
Tony Trapp, Executive Chairman of Osbit, said: “We are proud of our achievements of the past year, which is testament to the talented people at Osbit who continually devise and deliver complex engineering solutions to meet the requirements of our customers.
“As the energy sector environment remains challenging in areas, we have strived to adapt and remain agile to serve an evolving industry. This has been achieved through the creation of effective technology that is delivered, on each occasion, on spec, budget and in time.
“We are also delighted to be able to grow our workforce significantly by attracting top talent of experienced professionals and graduates. Osbit is an excellent training organisation, which takes new students and graduates and develops them into mature professional engineers and entrepreneurs, and is a strategy we will continue to deliver.”
Tony added: “We are cautiously optimistic about the future and look to build on the success of the past year. We have a strong pipeline and have secured a significant new contract after the year end. By maintaining our company ethos of creating sound engineering solutions in niche areas of technology using properly motivated, exceptional engineers, we believe Osbit can maintain and grow its position in the supply chain of the offshore energy industry.”