A NORTH-East subsea company has highlighted the importance of the Asia-Pacific region as it completes two major projects in the area.

Deep sea cable installation firm CTC Marine Projects (CTC), said it expects to remain active in the region following the demand for its skills.

It comes after the firm, which specialises in digging trenches and laying cables on the sea bed, has undertaken two very different projects, one lasting eight days off the coast of Australia and the other started in South Korea in 2010.

The project in Australia, undertaken on behalf of McDermott Industries (Australia), started in late December.

It saw the firm, which has the world's largest trenching and cable burying fleet for the oil and gas sector,carry out trenching work for the Kipper Tuna Turrum Project in the KTT gas field located 45 kilometres off the coast of Victoria.

CTC, based in Coniscliffe Road, Darlington, performed trenching of recently installed hydraulic and electrical umbilicals located in 100 metres of water.

Pierre Boyde, CTC Marine's Commercial and Business Development Director, said: "This project was another well planned and executed trenching job by CTC.

"We currently have another trenching spread on our Volantis subsea construction vessel working in South Korea, and we expect to remain active in this important APAC region."

The £22m South Korea project was awarded in December 2009 and involved installation of two 108 kilometre cable bundles between Jeju Island and Jindo Mainland Korea, in water depths of up to 160 metres.

The firm expects to complete the Jeju work shortly and Mr Boyde said: "The APAC region is very important to us. It has been a key market for a number of years and we see it as a key growth area for the future as we continue to operate our Singapore office in support of this.

"We are committed to working with our established partners in this region, which also includes Australia."

As well as its traditional work in the telecoms and oil and gas sectors CTC Marine, which employs 120 between its facilities at Darlington and at Teesport, has moved into the offshore wind sector and is one of the 19 companies which founded their own cluster group Energi Coast last year to put the region at the forefront of the industry.