Aker Kvaerner Host's Official Opening of Rotterdam Office

The Rotterdam office of Aker Kvaerner's engineering services company in the Netherlands was officially opened today by the Mayor of Rotterdam, Mr Ivo Opstelten. The event marked the expanding presence of the firm in the lifecycle services sector of the local market. Established just one year ago in March 2004, the office has already secured work from a number of clients.

The Aker Kvaerner office is located in the heart of the Botlek industrial area, to the west of Rotterdam in the Europoort, an area where all the major chemical and petrochemical companies and related industries are represented. Adjacent to the office, which is on the LBC tank farm, are the refineries of Shell and Exxon.

As Jan van de Graaf, Aker Kvaerner's Operations Director of Rotterdam and Maastricht, highlighted during the event, "In order to effectively deliver engineering services work, it is essential to be located close to our clients' sites. Setting up an office in Rotterdam was therefore the next logical step in our business strategy of providing lifecycle services to the chemicals and petrochemicals sector in the European market."

With a current workforce of some 80 staff, the Rotterdam office has already secured work from a number of clients located on Shell's premises within its first year of operations. Mark Leggett, President of the AK Engineering Services business added, "We are steadily expanding our resource base and scope of expertise here to provide reliability monitoring, maintenance services, shutdown management, as well as EHS & Risk assessments. These are the core elements of our lifecycle service portfolio in addition to engineering, procurement and construction management in the petrochemicals and pharmaceuticals sectors."

The office has also become the base for a pharmaceuticals project at Centocor, which currently provides a steady workload for some 15 people in Leiden.

This growth, together with workload predictions for the year ahead, have already prompted leasing of additional floor space to enable an increase in capacity to some 95 personnel.

The office, which operates as the legal entity Aker Kvaerner Engineering Services B.V., is part of the European network of engineering services offices that also includes Maastricht, Antwerp and Cologne, as well as a long-standing presence in Stockton, UK. Its sister organisation, AK Process, has an established presence in Zoetermeer, handling engineering, procurement and construction management of large newbuild and revamp process plant projects.

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Posted 06/04/05

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