A FAMILY engineering firm has hailed its diversity after securing work across a number of sectors.

Francis Brown Limited, in Stockton, is overseeing energy projects across the oil, gas and renewable industries.

The 112-year-old firm is making stainless steel support structures for the Nyhamna onshore gas plant project, in Norway.

It is also supplying five mooring buoys for the Canary Islands, to help offload oil from tankers, and is making turbine housing, known as nacelles, and components for a Scottish tidal turbine project.

The Nyhamna work has been delivered through a link with Wallsend-based OGN Group, which was last year awarded a contract to make units and racks for the Shell-operated energy site that delivers gas supplies to the UK.

Jamie Brown, managing director, said the work comes after the firm, which employs about 80 staff, expanded its factory to include more space for stainless steel welding.

He said the service provides vital support for offshore firms looking to equip machinery with better defences to tackle their harsh environments.

Mr Brown told The Northern Echo: “We have already won some major contracts on the back of having the stainless steel area.

“A major advantage of setting up such an independent, segregated facility is it’s allowed us to almost double our carbon steel fabrication capacity.

“One significant project from the move is for OGN, and we are making stainless steel support structures for the Nyhamna onshore terminal.

“Along with our high degree of attention to health and safety, one of the reasons we were successful in winning the work was down to our ISO3834 accreditation, demonstrating our control of quality related to welding, that we invested in a few years ago.

“But we’ve also been able to take on two other projects.

“One is for five mooring buoys, which will be delivered to the Canary Islands and used in the offloading of oil from tankers moored offshore.

“We are also making turbine housings and associated equipment for the Scotrenewables’ tidal turbine project.”

The Teesside company was founded as a wire trap and soil sieve shop in 1903, and Mr Brown said such a legacy of differing skills was allowing it to press ahead with more work, despite ongoing worries over the sunken oil price.

He also said it had allowed the firm to focus on apprentices.

He added: “Oil and gas, and increasingly the subsea sector, continue to provide us with a healthy proportion of work, but what helps us most is our diversity across the renewables, rail and chemical industries too.

“The oil industry has always experienced lapses, it is in one now, but it will come back.

“What is important for us is that we continue to have a good mix of strong clients in sectors that are in different phases of their economic cycle.

“We have also eight apprentices at the moment and we look at them a degree of confidence because of forward work we have.”

The company previously carried out specialist submerged arc welding for subsea connectors on a floating production, storage and offloading vessel used at an Australian gas project, working alongside Ashington-based Flexible Engineered Solutions.

It has also supplied turnpoints for Reef Subsea, in Norway, which identify underwater routes for cabling.