Page 20 - Danish Offshore Industry 2015

SEMCO MARITIME HOLDING ON TO THE NORTH SEA 2015 doesn’t quite appear to look like expected by Semco Maritime, but that is not going to make the company turn its back on its home grounds – the North Sea. Fortunately, it is not an everyday occurrence for Semco IMPORTANT HOME MARKET Maritime to be forced to reduce their staff of good This part of the plan was to be based on the key business employees, but the autumn of 2014 saw reductions def- in the North Sea till now having accounted for some 70 nitely not being part of the company’s visionary strategy, percent of the company’s turn-over, and even if at a time First Choice 2015. Its scope was for Semco Maritime to the plan was interpreted as an indication of Semco Mari- grow bigger, more resilient to changes in the market and time downgrading its traditional hunting grounds in the more proftable, but to CEO Steen Brødbæk work on the North Sea in order to upgrade areas like the Middle East strategy is far from wasted, even if some of its details that was far from the idea. have been somewhat scratched. “It takes a long time to get established in the Middle “Basically, we have succeeded in quite a lot of our East, and it makes no sense to us to transfer resources plans for the future. That goes for globalization and our from the North Sea to that area. The Middle East is a strategy for addressing various niches and segments. most conservative market where in 2014 we had a turn- But one thing, we did not to a similar extent succeed over of some 30-40 million DKK. We have been there with was execution and risk management of the project since 2004, and 2014 was our best year ever in the area, management of some of our activities, so we shall have so it is quite different from the North Sea which, obvi- to turn the spotlight a bit more on them. We do not ously, is much more relevant to us. Through the latest know yet how much of our strategy we may be forced to change,” states Steen Brødbæk, who would like to add purchasing of other activities and companies to the plans for internal growth. “That part was planned to add a considerable contri- bution to us, but there, too, we did not quite succeed as expected. It needs two to tango, but the companies we found interesting felt they were worth more than we found prudent to offer,“ states Mr. Brødbæk who was looking, too, at more distant markets as a part of First Choice. Steen Brødbæk and Semco Maritime still believe in the North Sea as their core business area. 20 / SEMCO MARITIME HOLDING ON TO THE NORTH SEA