Scots set sights on Norwegian market
Operating six vessels, including three new builds in the last three years, the company has expanded rapidly since 2006, when it took delivery of its first newbuild, the Margaret Sinclair.
The family-run company has its roots in the fishing and mussel farming industries, but salmon aquaculture is now its core market and it has built its latest vessel, the 28-metre Helen Mary, with ambitions to go further afield.
“We built it with the Norwegian market in mind,” reflects Ben Wilson, MD of Inverlussa Marine, “it’s a big market and the vessel has been scaled up accordingly, while in Scotland most workboats are in the 18-20m range, we are not seeing the demand for this size of vessel in Scotland at the moment, so we see it as a natural progression.”
Inverlussa’s five other vessels are all currently involved in Scotland’s salmon aquaculture industry, working for Cooke, the Scottish Salmon Company, Grieg Seafood Shetland and Scottish Sea Farms and are chartered out on a variety of contracts.
“We offer a range of contracts and are pretty flexible,” Ben reflects, “and currently they vary from a 7-year deal to a one-month rolling contract. We aim to provide our customers with a service which will hopefully take away some of the operational and financial risk that comes with these type of vessels.”
“The boats can perform a huge range of tasks – from site service work such as moorings, to setting up grids, to feed delivery, to doing peroxide work with ISO tanks.
“And they all come fully crewed. We see this as a big part of the service and our crews are all very experienced and have been with the industry for a long time – we aim to provide quality, modern vessels crewed by some of the best people in the industry.”
Inverlussa’s first four vessels were built by Noble’s in Girvan, but the two most recent additions to their fleet have been produced at MacDuff Shipyard in Banff.
“The last two we started with a blank sheet of paper and designed them ourselves, and can draw on our own experience, as well as getting some valuable input from our masters,” Ben explains. “Our collaboration with MacDuff has worked well for us – we’ve found them easy to work with on the newbuilds and they also have done some excellent refits of our other vessels too.”
Helen Mary specs
Length: 28m
Width: 10m
Cruising speed: 11 knots
Main engines: 3 x 600hp Caterpillar C18s
Propellers: triple screw 1400mm props in nozzles
Bow thruster: 350hp
Deck area 150m2
Deck crane: 150 tonne/, with 17m max outreach and radio control
Anchor windlass: 2 tonne
Crane winch: 5 tonne
Towing winch: 50 tonne
Anchor-handling winch: 50 tonnes
Deck cargo: 130 tonnes
Container capacity: 6x20ft containers
Accommodation: 6x2 berth and 1x1 berth cabins
