Scottish subsea specialist Sulmara has secured an $18.9 million investment from BGF, one of the largest growth capital investors in U.K. and Ireland, to support the expansion of its survey and inspection services in the offshore wind and energy markets.
BGF’s investment will support Sulmara’s 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.
The Glasgow-headquartered business was founded in 2019 and has grown rapidly to more than $70 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.
The business was the first services company in the offshore wind sector to be a signatory to the Climate Pledge, and has recently achieved independently verified Carbon Neutrality status against the BSI PAS 2060:2014 standard.
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 is already delivering services to major customers around the world including Orsted, Chevron and Seaway7 using remote and 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.
As part of BGF’s investment, Richard Pugh and Davis Larssen will join the board as Non-Executive Directors. Both Pugh and Larssen bring many years’ experience leading and investing in energy services and technology businesses.
“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,” said Kevin McBarron, Founder and CEO of Sulmara.