DALES Marine Services has secured its long-term future after renewing its leases to operate at Aberdeen and Leith harbours by 20 years.
The company specialises in ship repair, maintenance and fabrication, largely for vessels engaged in the oil and gas sector.
Dale Properties, the marine firm's sister company, said the extension of the deals with Aberdeen Harbour Board and Forth Ports safeguarded 100 jobs and paved the way for the recruitment of an additional 100 contract staff and specialists.
Chris Antczak, director of parent company Dales Group, said the timing was important, given the fresh wave of investment in the North Sea oil and gas sector.
Mr Antczak said: "It was very important for us to ensure the future security of the company. There was the option for either Forth Ports or Aberdeen Harbour to say they no longer required the dry-dock facilities.
"Extending by 20 years gives us a great secure future, knowing that we are able to operate out of those facilities and invest in those facilities to ensure we are modern and competitive."
Mr Antczak said that the wider oil and gas sector is enjoying greater confidence because of "the investment that is out there". He added: "It is up to each and every company to try to perform the best for their clients."
With the new leases in place, Mr Antczak revealed Aberdeen-based Dales was exploring the possibility of installing new dry-dock gates at Leith, which he described as a major engineering project given the age of the current gates.
Initial estimates suggest the project will cost at least £1 million to complete, though Mr Antczak emphasised it was still at the preliminary stage and was unable to comment on how it would be funded.
He said: "It is a preliminary investigation - so far we are looking at about the £1m-plus mark."
The plans for Leith come about a year after the firm invested £400,000 to extend the fabrication workshop at Aberdeen harbour.
In addition to its presence in Aberdeen and Leith, Dales has a base in Montrose, giving it a strong footfold in the marine repair business on the east of the country.
It also works in other parts of Scotland, in north-east England and abroad, and supplements its work in the oil and gas sector by working on vessels engaged in diving and platform sports, Caledonian MacBrayne ferries and on the fishing fleet based in Aberdeen.
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 hereComments are closed on this article