AN offshore engineering firm is enjoying a boom in the marine and subsea sectors, having secured international contracts worth more than £80m this year.

CTC Marine Projects, which has its head office in Coniscliffe Road, Darlington, said the agreements, a combination of new and extended contracts, represented a “significant achievement”.

The firm, which is owned by the American Trico Marine Group, specialises in trenching, cable-laying and associated work for the oil and gas, renewable energy and telecommunication industries.

Its projects include:

● The engineering, installation and trenching of more than 200km of fibre-optic cable in the Ekofisk field in the North Sea;
● Installation and trenching work for the Longtom project in Australia;
● Two newly-awarded projects in China, including ploughing work on the LeDong project;
● A subsea construction project for Petrobel in the North Bardawil Field, Egypt, which started this month;
● A contract award with an unnamed firm for installation of telecommunication cables starting next year.

Added to this, CTC announced last week that it had won its first contract in the offshore wind farm industry for E-ON Climate and Renewables UK to lay, install and bury power cable linking wind turbine foundations at the Robin Rigg Offshore Wind Farm in the Solway Firth, Cumbria.

Daryl Lynch, managing director of CTC Marine Projects, said: “These contract awards show the strength of our subsea services and subsea protection businesses.

“We continue to win contract awards directly or indirectly for national oil and renewable companies in the international arena, with the contracts noted above reflecting our international growth in critical regions such as Australia, China and Egypt.”

CTC employs 243 staff, of which 137 are based in Darlington.

It maintains an offshore marine base in South Bank, Teesside, and also has outposts in Singapore and Perth, Australia.

A spokeswoman for the firm said it was continuing to recruit new staff, although this was not directly related to any new contracts.

She said: “We are doing particularly well in Asia where a lot of our project wins are coming from.”

■ A PROGRAMME is being launched to make the most of opportunities provided by offshore wind energy.

The Northern Wind Innovation Programme is being funded through the Northern Way partnership, and will be delivered in part by the North- East-based New and Renewable Energy Centre.

It will provide a £2.6m research fund and aims to increase co-operation between academia and industry in the renewable energy sector.

Six launch events will be held next month – including one in Middlesbrough – for companies with an interest in entering the wind sector.

Companies can find out more about the events at nwip.org