Wood Group, the Scottish oil services giant, has beefed up its service offering and increased its presence in a key growth market with the latest in a series of bolt-on acquisitions.

Wood Group, the Scottish oil services giant, has beefed up its service offering and increased its presence in a key growth market with the latest in a series of bolt-on acquisitions.

Meanwhile, a big contract win for the firm's gas turbines business should allay fears it could be hit hard by the slowdown in the US.

Aberdeen-based Wood Group has increased its presence in the safety training business by acquiring Australia's Benchmark Global, which serves clients in the oil and gas, maritime and mining industries from a range of locations extending from Australia to Egypt.

The firm will be the first unit operated by Wood that is dedicated to safety training. It has bases in territories including Kazakhstan, in the former Soviet Union, a country in which oil and gas majors are investing heavily, but Wood has no permanent presence.

The acquisition will allow Wood to access Benchmark's client base and add its services to the range on offer to existing clients.

The deal is typical of the kind of purchase favoured by Wood Group, to broaden its offering and geographic reach.

Details of the transaction were not disclosed. Benchmark had gross assets of $8.3m (£4.4m) at June 2007. This makes it a minnow compared to Wood, which has a market capitalisation of around £2.3bn.

Separately, the company said its gas turbines division had won a $36m contract to build a generating plant at San Jacinto in Texas for the East Texas Electricity Company.

Keith Morris, analyst at Evolution Securities, said in a note: "This is the latest in a number of contracts in this division which should allay fears of any impact of the North American recession on this part of Wood Group's business."

The brokerage expects Wood Group to report interim pre-tax profits of $180m on Tuesday, up 37% year on year.

Morris said the group's engineering and production, well solutions and gas turbine divisions were all experiencing strong demand for services.