IAN McCONNELL
INVERNESS-based Orion Group has announced that it has become the first manpower company in the world to sign a joint venture agreement with China National Offshore Oil Corporation.
The joint venture involves the provision of personnel across CNOOC’s oil, gas and energy-related projects throughout China and the rest of the world.
Orion, which is owned by chairman Alan Savage and his family, said the CNOOC Orion Technical Services Co. joint venture had the capabilities to supply “foreign and local workers with a wide range of expertise”. Mr Savage visited the Chinese city of Tianjin to sign the groundbreaking joint venture deal.
Orion Group made pre-tax profits of £1.5 million on turnover of £339m in its 2015 financial year, a spokesman for the company noted.
Established in 1987, Orion Group has expanded from a small employment agency supplying Highland rig construction yards to a global player providing manpower to several key industry sectors. Oil and gas accounts for about 60 per cent of its business.
Orion Group, which already has a presence in Shanghai, employs more than 300 staff across 57 worldwide locations.
The spokesman said the company planned to increase its contractor personnel in China to more than 200 next year on the back of the joint venture. He said it had already secured more than 20 contractors in China.
Mr Savage said: “This deal marks the beginning of a new phase for Orion Group in China. We already have significant experience in China and the services of our staff in Shanghai are in high demand.
“To become the world’s first manpower supplier to CNOOC is a major milestone. We are looking forward to working with our partners in Tianjin to provide high-quality staff for the many key projects in the CNOOC order book for 2017 and beyond.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel