Sailing offshore Rosetti Marino

SAILING

OFFSHORE

Rosetti Marino is a shipbuilder for the oil and gas industry and a turnkey manufacturer of oil platforms, providing oil extraction solutions for the upstream oil and gas sector. The company’s general manager, Mr Deserti, speaks to Barbara Rossi about his listed company.

Rosetti Marino SpA is an integrated group of companies employing more than 700 people in Italy and 1300 people worldwide; its consolidated turnovers have reached and exceeded €350 million in recent years. About 80 per cent of its turnover comes from engineering and services for the upstream oil and gas sector, while the remaining 20 per cent is generated by shipbuilding, mainly for the upstream oil and gas sector. Rosetti Marino clients are major oil multinationals and local oil companies.

Rosetti Marino’s headquarters are located on the outskirts of Ravenna, a town in the northern Italian region of Emilia-Romagna. Here, occupying a three-hectare area, lie the company’s headquarters and workshop. The workshop is where prefabricated components are manufactured, to later be assembled at the Piomboni shipyard.

There are two shipyards, Piomboni and San Vitale, which are based in nearby Marina di Ravenna. The Piomboni shipyard covers an 11-hectare area located on the Piomboni Canal, and is part of the port of Ravenna. This is where equipment for the upstream oil offshore sector is assembled and shipped. The other shipyard is the nearby San Vitale yard, which covers a five-hectare area and is responsible for the shipbuilding.

In addition to these facilities, Rosetti Marino also owns two engineering companies, Basis Engineering and Fores, respectively based in Milan and Forlí. Both of these companies are independent and do not work exclusively for Rosetti Marino. Fores, which deals mainly with supplies in the field of communication and control systems for the upstream oil sector, carries out about 30 per cent of its work for Rosetti Marino. Basis is engaged in engineering for offshore projects for the oil and gas upstream sector, and the work it carries out for Rosetti Marino varies from 10 per cent to 80 per cent according to the year.

Important projects

Three years ago, Rosetti Marino also established the company KCOI in Kazakhstan with a Kazakhstani partner, in which it has a 50 per cent share. An area of 90 hectares was acquired for this purpose and the first phase of the project, which cost €50 million, has been completed and went into operation in January 2012. While this first phase of the development was being carried out the new company completed its first project. It now has another important ongoing project in another location in Kazakhstan, on the D artificial island in the Kashagan area – the largest oilfield discovered in the last 30 years.

Rosetti Marino is also present in other countries, where it constructs offshore oil platforms. For example, it has a branch in Tunisia where it employs 50 people and is currently in the process of revamping three offshore oil platforms. In Croatia, the company works with a local partner. Mr Deserti tells us: “In the last few years, with our partner we have constructed more than 90 per cent of the Croatian offshore platforms.” Rosetti is also present in Egypt, where it has produced three platforms with a local partner, and maintains a presence in Algeria through

its subsidiary Fores. Furthermore, it has its own subsidiaries in Libya and Iraq, although the latter two are currently only operational at commercial level.

One of the projects the company has recently completed in the offshore sector is the construction of three Jasmine jackets for the Jasmine North Sea oilfield project. Mr Deserti adds: “We are also currently engaged in a project in the North Sea for Total UK, involving the construction of two process modules for two offshore platforms, respectively called West Frankin and Elgin B. Completion is planned for June 2013.”

Another project which has been completed recently, this time in the shipbuilding sector, is the delivery of the platform supply vessel ‘F.D Remarkable’, one of ten service vessels that Rosetti Marino is building for the same shipowner Fratelli D’Amato. The next one, ‘Incomparable’, is going to be delivered in early June 2012. The company is also developing an anchor-handling supply vessel, which is very innovative in terms of anchor control in deep seas. It has a winch-pulling capacity of 500 tonnes, which, thanks to its UT712CD clean design, can be used in areas with very strict environmental legislation.

Furthermore, Rosetti Marino is involved, through one of its subsidiaries, Tecon, in the consortium that is working on the salvage of the Costa Concordia ship, which recently sank very close to the coast of the island of Giglio.

Geographical expansion

At the moment Rosetti Marino is mainly working for offshore facilities located in the North Sea (40 per cent), in the Mediterranean (10 per cent) and in the Caspian Sea (50 per cent). However, as Mr Deserti points out: “It is difficult to give exact percentages, as the company carries out projects of very significant volumes, therefore percentages can vary dramatically from year to year according to where current projects are based. Next year the situation could be very different.” The vessels built by the company travel all over the world, are certified to operate at global level, but are currently mainly employed in the North Sea.

Mr Deserti expects future growth to be of an organic nature, through geographical expansion involving joint ventures with local companies. Sustained growth is expected, continuing the trend of the last five years, thanks to the fact that the oil and gas sector is an industry that offers opportunities for growth. This growth will mainly come from expansion in new areas such as Turkmenistan, the Persian Gulf, West Africa and Mozambique. Mr Deserti says: “These are the areas that we are looking at to have a local presence and expand our production basis.”

Rosetti Marino holds all relevant certifications (ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and OHSAS 18001) and was among the first to achieve the ISO 9001 certification in the early 1990s. Mr Deserti stresses that the company has a strong focus on staff training and that he is particularly proud of the company’s safety record. n