Viking sets out strategies to expand offshore marine business

In a business and corporate update on Wednesday, Viking O&M affirmed its long term commitments to transform itself into a key offshore and marine player as it discontinued its non-core retail and distribution businesses.

Apart from maintaining its major competencies in heating, ventilation, air-conditioning and refrigeration (HVAC&R) systems, the company is seeking strategic alliances with leading offshore marine product principals in the areas of valve-control offshore vessel equipment, deck machinery peripherals, cargo handling equipment, and so forth.

“Having built up a foundation of offshore and marine services, the group continues to expand its suite of capabilities and plugging solution gaps so as to increase value to customers,” Viking O&M said.

It added that efforts to expand and deepen its presence in China, Southeast Asia, Middle East and Brazil geographical markets, widens its customer base and offer new capabilities to cater to new markets have started to yield success.

The group's orderbook has more than doubled to SGD85m ($66.5m) as at 31 December 2013 from SGD42m a year ago. New orders secured in financial year 2013 totalled SGD108m compared to SGD58m a year earlier.

Last year November, Viking O&M announced a strategic partnership with the founders of Labroy Marine to construct a drilling jack-up rig at approximately $180m. The rig is scheduled to be completed by end of 2015.

The group intends to acquire more offshore and marine assets of various platforms, rigs and vessels with pre-existing charters to build up its fleet in order to develop sizeable recurring charter revenue and economically meaningful portfolio,” it said.