Eide Marine Services is a defunct marine salvage and offshore investment firm based in Norway, specializing in transport, logistics and heavy lift operations. The company has its headquarters in
Høylandsbygd
Høylandsbygd is a village in Kvinnherad municipality in Vestland county, Norway. The village is located on the eastern part of the island of Halsnøya. It is one of the largest urban areas on the island, just after Sæbøvik and Eidsvik. Whil ...
. The company was founded in 1992, after the restructuring and merging of Eide Contracting and Eide Marine Tech. Following several years of deficits, aggravated by the long-term effects of the
2008 financial crisis
8 (eight) is the natural number following 7 and preceding 9.
In mathematics
8 is:
* a composite number, its proper divisors being , , and . It is twice 4 or four times 2.
* a power of two, being 2 (two cubed), and is the first number of t ...
, the company filed for bankruptcy in September 2016.
History
Early history
The original company, Georg Eide's Sønner, was founded in 1955 by brothers
Johannes
Johannes is a Medieval Latin form of the personal name that usually appears as "John" in English language contexts. It is a variant of the Greek and Classical Latin variants (Ιωάννης, ''Ioannes''), itself derived from the Hebrew name '' Yeh ...
and Gerhard Eide. Named in honour of their late boatbuilder father, Georg Eide Sr. (1896-1951) also a shipbuilder, the company focused on building wooden hulled boats for the fishing industry, which were still the most common vessels in rural Norway. During the first decade, the company grew fast, and by the late 1960s the company was one of the leading job suppliers in the county. With the decline of wooden hulls in the 1970s, the conmpany struggled to restructure their operations to meet modern demands for steel and aluminium hulls, leading to financial difficulties by the end of the decade. In 1982, two daughter companies were formed, Eide Marine Tech and Eide Contracting, in an attempt to restructure and delegate some of the companies assets and operations. Despite these efforts, main company Georg Eides Sønner was forced to declare bankruptcy in 1983.
Recent (1992-today)
Despite efforts to stabilize the finances of the company the struggles continued into the 1990s, and in 1992, the companies were merged into Eide Marine Services, the restructuring of which included selling the main shipyard, Halsnøy Verft, to rival firm
Mjellem & Karlsen the following year. In the 1990s and 2000s, the company gradually shifted their main operations towards the marine salvage market and offshore investments, with notable operations including the raising and salvage of
M/S Sleipner
The metre per second is the unit of both speed (a scalar quantity) and velocity (a vector quantity, which has direction and magnitude) in the International System of Units (SI), equal to the speed of a body covering a distance of one metre in a ...
in 1999 and
Green Aalesund
Green is the color between cyan and yellow on the visible spectrum. It is evoked by light which has a dominant wavelength of roughly 495570 nm. In subtractive color systems, used in painting and color printing, it is created by a combi ...
in 2001. In 2004, the company was once again in the media spotlight during the highly publicized capsize and raising of
M/S Rocknes
The metre per second is the unit of both speed (a scalar quantity) and velocity (a vector quantity, which has direction and magnitude) in the International System of Units (SI), equal to the speed of a body covering a distance of one metre in a ...
in 2004, cementing their status as one of the leading salvage experts in Scandinavia.
However, the
financial crisis of 2007–2008
Finance is the study and discipline of money, currency and capital assets. It is related to, but not synonymous with economics, the study of production, distribution, and consumption of money, assets, goods and services (the discipline of fi ...
had devastating effects on the maritime and shipping industries, nearly forcing to company into bankruptcy in 2007, after what Georg Eide described as "badly timed investments" shortly before the crisis. One of these investments was the procurement of the cargo vessel "Eide Carrier",
who would attract significant media coverage ten years later. By 2009, the company was again managing a small profit, and in June 2010, the company announced the signing of a long-term contract to produce maintenance ships for Brazilian firm
Lupatech, at the time estimated to generate 6.3 billion
NOK
Nok is a village in Jaba Local Government Area of Kaduna State, Nigeria. The village is an archeological site.
Archaeology
The discovery of terracotta figurines at this location caused its name to be used for the Nok culture, of which these ...
(c. 1 billion
USD) of revenue until 2020. However, the contract was cancelled in 2012 when Lupatech underwent a restructuring, leading to substantial losses for Eide Marine, who had already completed 70% of the work on two of the ten vessels ordered. The two partially constructed vessels were eventually sold to
Statoil
Equinor ASA (formerly Statoil and StatoilHydro) is a Norwegian state owned enterprise, state-owned multinational energy company headquartered in Stavanger. It is primarily a petroleum company, petroleum company, operating in 36 countries with ad ...
later the same year.
In the following years, the company suffered heavy deficits due to lack of long-term contracts, failed investments and high running costs of their many vessels, the majority of which were inactive. In 2015, the company reported a 90 million NOK deficit, nearly 300 million less than 2014. In 2016, a large number of employees were let go in an attempt to stabilize the economy, but by August that year, the company were forced to apply for credit extensions.
On 30 September 2016, the company filed for bankruptcy, reporting an outstanding debt of at least 500 million NOK and a predicted revenue of almost -100 million NOK for the fiscal year 2016. The following month, Norwegian maritime firm
Meidell AS Meidell is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:
* Frank Meidell Falch (1920–2013), Norwegian media director
* Gerhard Meidell Gerhardsen (1848–1912) (1848–1912), Norwegian bailiff and politician for the Conservative Party
* Ger ...
completed the purchase of the estate, with plans to continue operations of the shipyard and some of the transport work.
Kvinnheringen, 27.10.2016
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In February 2017, the company once again entered the media spotlight when the cargo vessel "Eide Carrier" - since sold and renamed "Tide Carrier" - lost engine power and almost ran aground en route to the Indian Ocean, with allegations of attempts to illegally salvage the ship in Pakistan.
References
{{reflist
Shipping companies of Norway
Companies established in 1993
Norwegian companies established in 1993