Hertel Offshore
Super modules
Hertel, a Dutch privately owned company, offering global industrial services to a number of industry sectors, acquired McGill Services in December 2007 to add UK presence, expertise and complementary services to its expanding Hertel Defence & Offshore Division based in Rotterdam.
McGill provides modular accommodation to the marine and offshore industries. Formed in 1972, the company quickly built up a good reputation as a modular accommodation provider for offshore enabled vessels. Incorporating a multi-disciplinary approach to its work, McGill offers bespoke solutions to suit the individual requirements of each customer.
Hertel was founded in 1895 as a supplier of gaskets to the maritime industry by Mr. Alexander Hertel in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Today, Hertel constructs, maintains, modifies and dismantles plants and installations for the oil & gas, (petro)chemical, process and power industries in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Group revenues in 2008 were in excess of 780 million euros with over 11,000 employees.
The focus this year has been to integrate McGill Services fully into Hertel to ensure effective use of assets and resources, which gives a excellent proposition to the customer base.
The expertise of Hertel Offshore is now built on the combination of the vast experience and success of Hertel Marine Services, McGill Services and CKT Projects. A dedicated group of professional project managers, engineers and technicians take pride in longstanding and well established relationships with international customers.
This integration is now nearly complete, with the decision to rename the Division Hertel Offshore, which reflects the key market the business will focus on. Marine, naval and defence still remain key target areas, which is why the route to market and brand will simply be ‘Hertel’ aiding the seamless offering across the whole Hertel corporate structure. Jon Rokk, managing director, describes the next stages of the McGill integration and re-branding: “In January 2010, we will be starting a PR and marketing campaign to announce that we’re renaming our division Hertel Offshore. Hertel will be the external brand, and McGill as a brand will disappear. The combined business will have revenues of around 80 million euros, and about 300 staff.
“We will then have significant operations in Rotterdam and Teesside, where we have recently moved our pre-fabricated manufacturing facilities to a new 165,000 square foot warehouse which will increase our capacity five-fold. In the New Year we will also be moving our office based staff to a new location that will allow us to grow and add more resources to the group. We are very excited about the changes and will soon be sharing our plans with all of our key stakeholders including customers and suppliers.”
Hertel Offshore designs, fabricates and installs ‘plug-and-play’ accommodation modules and specialised containerised solutions for the defence, offshore and marine industry.
Jon continues: “As Hertel we have a much wider spread and capacity than ever before. The offshore industry is an important client where we design, supply and install offshore and marine outfitting packages, HVAC systems, and modular accommodation units. By choice, crew accommodation on platforms is preferably built in modules. Our units are just as easily used on land, for example, we supply special refrigeratorfreezer containers, kitchen units and mobile fuelling units for the Royal Dutch Army.”
He adds: “For the petrochemical industry we build blast resistant units to house site operations accommodation on refineries. These site offices can resist huge shock waves, which may occur in the event of an explosion and are subject to stringent requirements. The offshore and defence industry are two different worlds, but have definitely one thing in common: their equipment specifications are far more stringent than those in civilian life, for example, in the area of fire and explosion resistance. Moreover, everything has to be rather more solid than on shore and as such all designs are tested under the most strenuous conditions: heat, cold, humidity, drought, dust and vibration.”
The organisation’s next target will be to achieve a presence in Aberdeen, very early in the New Year, because Aberdeen is a key market for the Offshore sector where it has not been active before. As a new member of the supply chain in Aberdeen, the company will be offering a different proposition to the market, which is expected to be well received.
He goes on to describe the strong points of this new brand: “We have looked at our competitors in the marketplace, and we feel we can offer a mixture of six or seven key points that when combined, can offer an extremely powerful proposition that exceeds what our customers are looking for and with the Hertel structure and backing, we know we can be extremely competitive and innovative. We have already started to benefit from other Hertel operations by using the excellent fabrication facilities we have with Hertel Project Services at the Wilton Workshops, which means we will have to outsource less of our manufacturing enhancing quality, control and price. The combination of experience, innovation, facilities, people and financial stability, is extremely powerful.”
Hertel aims to deliver the best service in the industry, performed by people who are amongst the best in the business by always delivering on promises – on time, on budget, and beyond the standard required. The company endeavours to improve a client’s business by helping them to achieve success. Constantly striving to improve on performance; training, innovation and learning from experience have been at the heart of Hertel for over one hundred years in the business.
As the company is focusing so steadily on the future, it is hoping to win a number of contracts next year to support its continued growth. Jon elaborates: “We’re bidding in the offshore sector in the North Sea for next year. We will continue to look globally and benefit from Hertel’s overseas expansion, especially in areas where Hertel already has a presence such as the Middle East and SE Asia. On the defence side, we’ll continue bidding for naval work. Last year, we were awarded the contract for the pre-fabrication accommodation (1200 units) on the two new Queen Elizabeth Class aircraft carriers in Glasgow, which was the biggest contract ever won at McGill. We are also going to continue our work in developing products for the army and other land based military requirements.”
Finally he describes the company’s plans for future development: “The strategy we are employing is to gain more geographical symmetry, by expanding into new markets around the world where either our customers are based or moving to, or where Hertel has a footprint.
“In the future we want to be a specialist in our area, the number one choice for our customers, and we see the company growing with strong local hubs across the world. This is an exciting period for our company and we are all ready for the challenge to take the business to the next level,” Jon concludes.
Hertel Offshore
Services: Living quarters, pre-fabricated and modular accommodation units