SAS and its partners are always in search for bright and clever engineers, who can participate in further development and design of our products. Being close to our clients and to understand perfectly their needs is considered crucial. Therefore we are continuously further enhancing our local engineering capabilities and expertise.

For our Houston sales office we have contracted a very experienced engineer, Eric Hurst. The last ten years he has been heavily involved in developing and making designs for complex winch and mooring systems. We are very proud that Eric joins our team as Technical Director for the USA, which will further help us in providing our clients the most optimum and reliable winch solutions.

AXTech has established an engineering office in Kristiansund in addition to their Molde office in Norway and their Poland office in Gdynia . AXtech's Office Manager in Kristiansund, Erik Aspen, is a Master Engineer in the field of steel structure and mechanics.

Our aim is to keep improving and expanding our group of engineers at our Dutch, Norwegian, Brazilian and Houston offices. Please feel free to contact us, if you are interested in joining one of these professional and enthusiatic team of engineers.

Our partner from Norway, AXTech AS, is pleased to announce the award of a contract for Module Handling / Subsea Winch System.

SubSea7 awarded this contract for design and delivery of a winch system that will be installed in a new vessel currently being fabricated at Ulstein Verft in Ulsteinvik, Norway. The vessel is owned by Eidesvik and is specially designed for IMR (Inspection, Maintenance & Repair) operations for Statoil.

The winch system is a so-called Module Handling System (MHS) which is used for lifting operations of special modules on seabed installations.       The system comprises a total of six (6) winch units ranging from 5 to 70 tonnes lifting capacity and an operational capacity down to approx. 2000 meters. All winches have electrical drives and have a built-in Active Heave Compensation (AHC) and Active Rope Tension (ART) controls. This system compensates for the vessel movements relative to the seabed. Total peak max power consumption for this system is well above 3000kW. In addition to this we shall also develop a special controls- and operation system which is in harmony with other systems onboard.

The award of this contract proves that SAS and its partners are well established to design and develop advanced lifting- and material handling equipment for the marine and offshore industry, where competitiveness, efficiency, reliability and trust are very important.

Our Norwegian partner, AXTech, is pleased to announce the award of a contract by SMD (Soil Machine Dynamics Ltd) in Newcastle, UK for the supply of three Launch and Recovery Systems (LARS) for handling of Seafloor Production Tools (SPTs).

The contract (up to EUR. 20 million) is by far AXTech’s largest, and will run until end of 2012.

The scope of supply is for three LARS systems comprising A-Frames, Winches, Sheave units and Hydraulic Power Units (HPUs). The systems shall handle loads of 250 Metric Tons (+ wire weight) between vessel and seabed. Max operating depth is 2500m. Each of the Hydraulic Power Units for operation of the winches and A-Frames has a total installed power of approx. 2200-2400 kW.

All three systems shall be installed on the Production Support Vessel. Designing equipment capable of handling such large loads at great water depths will be an exciting challenge for AXTech. AXTech have, however, successfully designed similar sized equipment before in other applications. 

SMD is one of the world’s leading companies for the supply of ROVs, trenching systems, components and special projects. They have a worldwide customer base operating in markets in oil and gas, telecoms, mining, salvage, military and scientific research.

SMD is responsible for provision of all (3) production machines, including the LARS systems, to final Client which is Nautilus Minerals Inc (‘Nautilus’), a seafloor production company with their head office in Canada.

Nautilus is developing a production system using existing technologies adapted from the offshore oil and gas industry to enable the extraction of these high grade Seafloor Massive Sulphide ("SMS") systems on a commercial scale. This in co-operation with suppliers of specialized heavy duty equipment like SMD and AXTech.
It is the first company to commercially explore the seafloor for massive sulphide systems, a potential source of high grade copper, gold, zinc and silver.
The world's first seafloor copper-gold project, Solwara 1, is under development in Papua New Guinea.

AXTech SPT LARS (Launch And Recovery Systems) will be utilized initially at the Solwara 1 site in water depths of up to 1700m.

SAS is pleased to announce that effective December 2010 Mr. Jim Allen has joined SAS U.S.A., Inc. Jim will be working in the position of Sales Director-North America from our new office in Houston, Texas.  Jim has more than 30-years International experience selling winches for all applications and he has always had Gulf of Mexico responsibilities as well as travelled extensively in Brazil, and S.E. Asia.

SAS U.S.A.  focuses on the sales, design, manufacture and service of all kinds of pipelaying equipment and the following type of heavy-duty winches; Mooring winches, Anchor Handling Winches, A&R Winches, Hawser Winches, Traction Winches, Umbilical Winches, Reel Drives and other Hoisting and Pulling Winches with capacities over 100 Tons W.L.L.

Jim can be contacted by email at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or you may reach him by phone at (832) 477-2979.

He will be present as well on the SAS booth at the Offshore Technology Conference in May 2011

SAS will participate at the Offshore South East Asia exhibition to be held in Singapore from 30 November till 3 December 2010.

Our colleagues of SAS from Holland, AXTech from Norway and Natec from Brazil would be very much obliged to meet you at our booth, nr. 6T3-07, to inform you about the latest developments regarding our offshore deck equipment.

We are looking forward to seeing you there.

More information about the exhibition can be found at http://www.osea-asia.com/

Next month SAS will deliver a complete 120mt pipelay system to a well known French contractor.

The lay equipment, consisting of Pipe Tensioners, A&R Winch and Pipe Handling Equipment,  will be foreseen with new and sophisticated software to increase the overall performance of the laybarge in very shallow water. The system will also be supplied with supervisory controls and a data acquisition system (SCADA), which will continually monitor and operate the pipe laying system.

The new software is developed in-house and has been extensively tested in simulation models and in a real life test set-up as well.

 The pipelay barge is intended to be used in the shallow waters of West Africa.

SAS keeps further expanding its product portfolio for complete Pipelay Systems. Besides our experience with Stinger designs and Stinger Handling equipment we now happily announce a new contract for the supply of a complete Stinger Integrated Monitoring System.

These subsystems will have an integrated monitor and control system and parameters will be shown on monitors in the stinger control room and the vessel/DP control room.

For more information on the stinger monitoring system,  please feel free to contact us.