Growth capital investor BGF announced a £15 million investment in Glasgow-headquartered Sulmara, an independent provider of survey and inspection services to the offshore wind and energy markets.
Sulmara was founded in 2019 and has grown rapidly to £55.8 million annual revenue, delivering a compound annual growth rate of 61% over the last four years, and building a global footprint with offices in Glasgow, Aberdeen, Norwich, Houston, Singapore and Taipei.
As part of BGF’s investment, Richard Pugh and Davis Larssen will join the Sulmara board as Non-Executive Directors.
“BGF’s investment will support Sulmara’s continued growth trajectory, including further investment in new technologies such as uncrewed surface vessels (USVs), autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), next generation geophysical sensors and advanced data products,” said BGF.
“The ability to use these advanced systems both alongside and with traditional survey vessels supports improved high-quality data turnaround time while significantly reducing the environmental impact of offshore projects.
“Sulmara are already delivering benefits for major customers around the world including Orsted, Chevron and Seaway7 using remote & innovative systems, and BGF’s investment will enable further complex and low carbon data collection in environments that pose a huge challenge to conventional methodologies.”
Kevin McBarron, Founder and CEO of Sulmara, said: “BGF’s investment comes at an important moment for the company as we look to build on the success of our technology and innovation efforts to date and to accelerate their introduction to our service offerings. This significant investment of growth capital is a vote of confidence in our strategy from an established investment partner in BGF. The international growth and breadth of services now delivered demonstrates that our approach is also resonating with our clients and supports their need to reduce Scope 3 emissions as the path to NetZero matures.
“We now look forward to investing further in the technology that will allow us to deliver world-class services to support the entire offshore energy sector at a lower carbon cost.”
Richard Pugh, Investor at BGF, said: “Offshore renewables and their adjacent technologies have an increasingly important role in decarbonising our energy, and an area Scotland has world leading expertise. Sulmara’s growth in the last 3-4 years is evidence of both the quality of their operations as well as the ability of Kevin and his team to deliver for clients while also building a truly global business. Working closely with Kevin, Mike, Davis and the rest of the management team, we look forward to supporting the next stage in Sulmara’s exciting growth journey.”