De regt

COMPANY PROFILE

2014

De Regt Marine Cables

+31 180 66 88 00 | www.deregtcables.com

The preferred cable technology partner Editorial: Christian Jordan

With many years’ experience in advanced cable design and supply for leading clients in the oil and energy, defence, seismic exploration and scientific market sectors worldwide, DE REGT Marine Cables is recognised as a true industry leader. Managing Director, Claude Pelzer tells Total World Energy more about how the company has grown, and continues to grow, into a first class product and service provider…

In the past couple of years there has been a trend towards exploring further offshore and in deeper, harsher environments. While some companies are happy to drill in shallow water, taking advantage of the vast proven reserves that are

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available, it is exploration in deep water (500 feet or more below the surface of the sea) that are becoming the real challenge for the world’s foremost energy companies.

And as we all know, it’s not just the oil companies that have to

invest after a decision to explore in deepwater is taken. The whole supply chain has to change the way it operates and come up with innovative solutions to the deepwater/harsh environment problem.

DE REGT Marine Cables Just last year, the Wall Street Journal reported that leading energy companies including Chevron Corp, Statoil and BP had al invested in heavily in new technology designed for deepwater operation.

WeST Drilling Products AS, a unit of WeST Group, has created a robotic oil rig that it says will reduce drilling time by up to 50 per cent, Chevron has developed proprietary seismic-imaging technology that it says gives it a much clearer picture of what lies beneath the sea floor and BP is developing a set of new deepsea technologies called Project 20K™ to enable safe exploration at pressures as high as 20,000 pounds per square inch and temperatures as high as 350

degrees Fahrenheit.

But what do all of these projects, and the many others that surround deepwater projects, have in common? Just like any project; deep or shallow, research or production, renewable or fossil fuel based, they all need to be connected and this requires subsea cabling.

Away from the energy industry, submarine cables are an absolute necessity of the modern world, on par with global positioning satellites and sea freight. Over the next few years, new submarine cables are set to be required around the world - being deployed in both areas where cables are common, and broaching areas never before attempted.

Through 2016, a combined

annual growth rate of 9.87 per cent for the submarine cable market has been predicted by Research and Markets, a firm studying the trends of a number of sectors.

One of the leading companies in custom-engineered, specialty, dynamic or static cable solutions used in subsea applications is DE REGT Marine Cables, a Netherlands based supplier to the oil and energy, defence, seismic exploration and scientific industries.

HISTORIC TIES Managing Director, Claude Pelzer tells Total World Energy more about the deep history of this highly innovative and growing organisation that was founded in

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1912 by JF de Regt (senior) as a goldsmiths business.

“DE REGT started many years ago and after investment, the company moved into the cabling market. Interestingly, in 1991, DE REGT teamed with a competitor, Jacques, and became JDR and that went on for two decades going through various capital investors. At some point, interest came from Dutch industrialist, Fugro and they took over the Dutch subsidiary. This meant that DE REGT marine cabling section continued by themselves and JDR in the UK split off in 2011. Now, as of 2013, DE REGT has become part of Sercel, as part of the deal between Fugro and CGG to sell

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the complete Geo Survey division.

“Originally, DE REGT was operational in the seismic exploration and defence technology markets which ultimately looks at oil and gas at the bottom of the ocean and submarine systems and defence systems. Both are similar in that they are tow systems, based on a rake technique. Obviously there are big differences, specifically we look at seismic activity by towing various umbilicals behind vessels for marine acquisition companies.”

As activity in global offshore sectors grows, the demand for services from companies like DE REGT grows with it. In the UK alone in the coming three

years, there is expected to be an increase in activity. In a recent report, the UK HSE suggested that there are 107 oil and gas plus 181 gas producing installations, located on 383 producing fields in 2014 with 50 new field developments planned across all sectors. And this kind of growth is not unique to the UK. This growth in offshore projects is something which DE REGT has witnessed, along with growth in other marine based industries.

“For the last three years we’ve seen more action in our largest market, the seismic exploration market in oil and gas. We relate the largest part of our turnover, between 50-80%, to that market,”

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LEADING PRODUCT RANGE says Pelzer.

“Next is the defence market which has always been quite stable. This involves working with large and prestigious original equipment manufacturers throughout the defence market.

“In the past we’ve focussed on these two areas, seismic and defence, and in the last few years we’ve also focussed on what we call oil and energy which is pursued by our mother company Sercel as a growth area so we’ve been putting the company’s knowledge and experience into this new area with new products and new technologies to cope with demand from the oil and gas and the renewable energy markets so that we can come up with fit-for-purpose products which can go to harsh environments or polar conditions where we have deepwater situations,” he adds.

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DE REGT products are used in a range of applications and as a leader in the design and manufacture of custom-engineered, dynamic and static cable solutions, the company can also maintain cables.

“We design and manufacture the key interfaces in your subsea infrastructure. We develop and deliver the essential links in your marine data gathering system.

“We will maintain them too - for the whole of the product life helping to maximise your business opportunities by meeting your operational goals,” DE REGT says.

And innovation is at the heart of product development with Pelzer saying that new ideas are always being considered as the company tackles the challenge of deepwater applications.

“We envisage going to very deepwaters but keeping the systems on top of the vessels or

rigs so that you can see the benefit of a much lighter umbilical enabling the client to go to deep but not having to interchange parts which can be costly.

“We are trying to open up larger markets in oil and gas, especially in deepwater applications. In the near future, we might end up with projects for deep sea mining. If we go to an area with 5km water depths for a total system, if you roll it out with a lot of power being consumed at the bottom of the ocean then the umbilical and the system itself are areas where you will need to reduce weight in some way to make the system work. This is why we are trying to push the conventional methods out of the market and come with disruptive innovation,” he says.

As with most innovations, design and development takes time and DE REGT works closely with clients to make sure all specifications are met.

“Typically, there’s a number of alterations during the design phase.

Depending on the request and client specification, in the beginning there can be a lot of questions.

Sometimes, the client will have uncertainty about their own system and this is where we can jump in and think with the client to come up with a good solution.

“You have to consider many things including water depth, weight of the umbilical, weight of the systems, how does it behave in a certain sea state or certain area, and then come up with a full specification and design, which can go through several alterations, until the client is happy to go ahead.

Then we build a prototype; test it, qualify it and then come up with a complete system for full production.

This can take anything between 10 and 30 weeks depending on the size of the project,” explains Pelzer.

DE REGT Marine Cables ON-GOING EXPANSION To create products and execute services that live up to the quality of the DE REGT brand, the company only works with highly skilled professionals, training them in the DE REGT way from the very beginning. This investment into people has allowed the company to grow both internally and in its preferred market places.

“From a design point of view, we look at bachelors, masters or PHD graduates; people with a strong education technically, electrically and mechanically,” says Pelzer. “The process starts with serious training production-wise so our people have a very practical approach.

They learn from others what the boundaries are and what the capabilities of the machinery are.

Then they get extensive training on cable design, termination and endfittings. They learn everything to do with cable design and this can take two or three years before people can call themselves senior. It’s a very specific approach to education alongside the education that they’ve already had.”

Away from development of the workforce, DE REGT has also been growing its physical footprint and now with additional offices in China and Germany, from its base in Holland, the company is continually innovating.

“Our base is our production and design facility in Holland. This is where we originated and where we have grown from. Today we have a facility that is four times as large as what it was in the beginning.

Looking at growth regions, we see China as a growth area and we found that a local presence was needed there. Along with our mother company, we have several entities that we can address throughout the world so this is good for us from

a R&D point of view. At our sales office in China we regularly meet with clients to ensure a very close relationship as China has a different culture so we have made sure we put in serious effort.

“DE REGT Germany was acquired last year and this is a whole new development which originated from the elevator business and we see a lot of benefit from pushing a new technology that we refer to as RiFleR (Rigid Flexible Rods) which could be the next generation of lightweight armour packages in umbilicals and deepwater equipment lowering and hoisting applications,” explains Pelzer.

MARKET DEVELOPMENT As the business of DE REGT grows and the products and services on offer continue to develop, the company has to evaluate each opportunity and decide on whether or not its specialist offerings will suit each project.

“It’s very important that you know what you’re dealing with when it comes to your clients and your competition,” Pelzer explains. “You have to look at your own strengths and for certain projects it’s important to find out what your unique benefits are and in some cases you have to choose to say ‘no’ or say ‘yes, this is perfectly within our capabilities or with some modification or investment this could be worthwhile pursuing’.

“In any case, with any opportunity, you have to find out whether there is a solution or opportunity where you can step in. If you want to move in a new market but you find out that your competitors have been active for many years, you definitely need to come up with an innovation that is disruptive or otherwise guarantee that you can deliver the same product but that often does not give

a great benefit because clients may have a long lasting relationship with a competitor already.”

In the future, similar growth that has been witnessed over the past few years is exactly what the company is looking for. And with the development of deepwater projects, and the offshore energy industry in general, it seems as though there will be huge opportunities for DE REGT as we move towards the end of 2014 and beyond.

“We have to be realistic but we don’t set easy targets for ourselves,” the Managing Director says. “We want to reach out to the people we work with and discuss with potential partners what are the possibilities.

We are very aware of ourselves being one part of a larger system in certain market places where we want to grow. It takes a lot of investment but the sky is the limit for disruptive innovation and ultimately if you look at our growth, you can see that it’s pretty serious.

“We would like to grow massively in some areas because of the added value that we are able to deliver.

Of course all things need to be researched in the short-term so we can make informed decisions but we would like to see a trend of growth so that we can enter new markets besides the ones we have been in for the past few decades.”

And considering DE REGT is already a self-proclaimed ‘world player in marine cables’, if the company (and the industry) achieves the sort of growth that it is hoping for, it won’t be long before DE REGT is recognised by even more organisations as the worldwide industry leader and whenever one of the many planned offshore projects gets the green light, DE REGT will be there to provide the very best of custom-engineered, specialty, dynamic or static cable solutions

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