Unique Maritime secures Blue Water investment

Unique Maritime Group (UMG), one of the world’s leading integrated turnkey subsea and offshore solutions provider, is pleased to announce a pivotal strategic equity investment from Blue Water Energy.

Founded in 1993, UMG is a specialist in the provision of services, and the sale and rental of equipment for the marine, diving, hydrographic, oceanographic, oil & gas, inspection and NDT market sectors. The group has an established manufacturing capability for the delivery of customised engineering projects worldwide. Headquartered in the Hamriyah Free Zone of the United Arab Emirates, UMG has built up an impressive reputation for quality, innovation, service and speed of response in its nearly two decades of existence and is always striving to improve its product and service offering. The group’s operations are spread across the Middle East, USA, UK, South Africa, Nigeria, India and Singapore.

Founded in 2011, Blue Water Energy is a leading global middle market energy private equity firm based in London. The firm primarily targets private equity investments in the upstream and midstream/downstream energy supply chain, while partnering with best-in-class management teams and utilising a network of seasoned investment and operating professionals that drive value throughout all aspects of the investment process. Its Partners have on average 25 years of relevant experience and, complemented by a seasoned investment team, the Blue Water Energy investment team possess combined experience spanning over 160 years.

The new partnership will allow UMG to accelerate its growth plans through additions to its Rental fleet, as well as through further acquisitions, to expand the product & service offering and geographic distribution.

UMG has an impressive line-up of products and services for the marine, diving, survey, NDT and inspection and oil & gas sectors. A few of these products and services can be listed as follows:

• Marine: integrated vessel management, control and safety systems; power generation and propulsion systems for offshore vessels; onboard energy management solutions; hoisting equipment, deck machineries and offshore containers; unique seaflex range of air lift bags, water weights and pipeline buoyancy units.
• Diving: air and mixed gas diving systems; saturation diving systems; hyperbaric rescue facility; daughter craft; breathing air compressors; commercial diving equipment.
• Survey: hydrographic, oceanographic, geophysical & geotechnical survey equipment; environmental and oceanographic monitoring solutions; remotely operated and autonomous operated underwater vehicles; underwater security solutions.
• Inspection: subsea corrosion protection inspections; NDT equipment; CSWIP inspection engineers; ACFM, MPI, FMD, UT.
• Oil & Gas: pipeline rehabilitation; hot tapping and line stopping; onsite machining; under pressure leak sealing; pipeline repair clamps; online safety valve testing; online valve maintenance; pipe freezing; portable onsite machine rental solutions; subsea diamond wire pipe cutter; hot tap & line stop tees and fittings; extruded headers; pipeline isolation and inspection tooling solutions.

On this occasion, Harry Gandhi, Chief Executive Officer at Unique Maritime Group commented, “Blue Water Energy is a strong partner for this important growth phase of our business. From the outset, the team at Blue Water Energy has understood our strategy and vision and we are confident that with their industry experience and network, they can strongly support UMG’s expansion plans.”

Tom Sikorski, Partner at Blue Water Energy further added, “We are very excited to have been given the opportunity to work with Harry and his team. The partnership with UMG continues our investment strategy of working with founder owners building international energy companies. Harry and his team have a very successful track record to date and we see significant growth opportunities – both organically and through acquisitions - for UMG across its international network.”

Adapted from press release by Hannah Priestley-Eaton

Read the article online at: https://www.worldpipelines.com/business-news/16072014/unique_maritime_secures_blue_water_investment/