From the UAE, a new serial production line for offshore wind

February 6, 2025

Ian Prescott, CEO of Lamprell, talks to The Energy Year about the company’s dual focus on the oil and gas and offshore wind sectors and how Lamprell leverages its expertise to drive the energy transition in the UAE and the region. Lamprell is an international provider of EPCI services and production infrastructure for the energy industry.

What have been the key elements behind Lamprell’s growth strategy in recent years?
I have been CEO since 2023, and when you come into an organisation like Lamprell, you need to understand what it is and what it wants to be. What is the vision? What are the market conditions? One of the first things that we did when I joined was to scrutinise the market and identify its core needs.
Like everybody else, we want the energy transition. We want a clean earth. We want green energy. However, we can’t do all that overnight. We need to provide oil and gas and support the transition going forward.
In 2024, we completed our 29th and 30th drill rigs for ARO Drilling in Saudi Arabia. We did it with our partner, IMI. We continue to work alongside Aramco, ADNOC and our other clients, and we are looking at opportunities in Qatar.
A real turning point came in 2018 when we became a long-term agreement contractor for Aramco. The scope of work required us to go beyond fabrication and take on full EPCI delivery. That partnership has fundamentally reshaped Lamprell’s capabilities and positioning in the market.. As a result, our pipeline today is over USD 50 billion.

How has your new production line helped you to secure more contracts in the offshore renewables space?
Lamprell has been investing in what we call our growing line, which is effectively a serial production line for the offshore wind segment. We have been quite successful. We secured the Moray West project in Scotland, which we delivered in 2023 and early 2024. The project was completed on time, on budget and with an outstanding health and safety performance. The client was incredibly happy. They have almost become a business development arm of Lamprell now, seeing as how they have been telling the whole market what a great job we did.
As a result of Moray West, we signed a couple of contracts with RWE in excess of USD 650 million. We are really happy with what’s happening in the renewables sector, but also in our oil and gas business. There’s been a huge amount of activity in this region and, as a UAE company, we’re very proud.

 

What will be the weight of renewables in your business going forward?
We have managed to secure almost USD 2 billion of new business in the past 18 months. That’s a mixture of oil and gas and renewables, and the split is around 70% oil and gas and 30% renewables.
Going forward, we see that transitioning to where the weights will swing around the other way. As you know, a lot of the countries in the GCC, the UAE and Saudi Arabia included, are already on the renewables bandwagon. H. E. Dr. Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber has made it very clear that the UAE is pursuing renewable energy, and in Saudi Arabia, it is the same.
We are happy to be at the forefront of those efforts. We have been in the renewable sector since 2007. We were building wind installation vessels back then. We have a long history. When this region takes off, we will be able to provide our expertise, and that is something we’re very happy about.

What are Lamprell’s key differentiators vis-à-vis the competition?
In all the companies I have worked for, the key asset, without a shadow of a doubt, is the people. You need the right teams. Lamprell has about 6,000 employees, and about 1,000 have been with the company for more than 15 years. That is a very meaningful statistic if you consider the experience and the capabilities that those people bring to the organisation and to what we do. What we try to do is give those people the right kind of leadership so that they can flourish.
Another important element is how we leverage new technologies. We have a three-year IT initiative in progress that encompasses all our technology. It’s about improving all systems. Within that, we have AI and how it can help us move forward. We have a digitalisation department that is continuously making us more efficient.

Where do you see Lamprell five years from now?
We are in a turnaround process and, thanks to the hard work of our owners and all the stakeholders involved, we have made great strides. We have steadied the ship and set the right course. Ultimately, we want to be the leader in our sector, and not just in this region, but globally. And there are many ways we can achieve that.
First, we need to deliver on our commitments to our clients and help to make sure that their projects are successful. Second, we want to diversify into other markets. Our goal is to expand and grow our footprint. We recently opened an engineering office in Chennai and are looking at opening new facilities in Saudi Arabia, since it is such a crucial market for us, but also looking at growing in the markets we serve in the UK and Europe.

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