Following a review of internal systems at the company’s Tubes Division, the recent report from the Crown Office, ‘Offshore Wind Cost Reduction, Pathways Study’, and demand from the market, the Barrett Steel Group has created the Barrett Offshore Tubes business to provide a dedicated and focused service to the offshore market for oil, gas and renewable energy sources.
As part of Barrett Offshore Tubes business development strategy the service centre in Scunthorpe is earmarked for future development. The centre already houses one of Barrett Steel’s tube laser profiling machines and will be used specifically for the storage and distribution of hot formed and seamless material. Stocked grades now include G13+N, G15+N and API X52 in addition to S355J2H to cater for the needs of offshore fabricators.
Robert Kirby, Commercial Manager of the new Barrett Offshore Tubes Business , explains: “The Crown Estate’s report advocates a significant reduction in the cost of producing electricity from £140/MWh to £100/MWh by 2020 through a number of measures including: managing a pipeline of projects; supporting new methods of working; standardising solutions; supply chain efficiency; optimisation of logistics; and industrialising the supply chain to provide opportunities to reduce capital and operating costs.
“The extent to which these cost reductions are realised by the supply chain and, ultimately, the customer depend on how quickly supply chain partners respond and react. In establishing Barrett Offshore Tubes, we have been proactive in establishing a division that has the flexibility to deal with projects at their prototyping stage and also provide an optimum service during volume production. In addition we are able to work with all of our partners to achieve customers’ goals.”
Barrett Steel will offer its customers a wide stock range and access to additional materials through its supply chain network, as well as wide-ranging processing and cutting facilities. The Tube Division has a history in serving the vehicular, agricultural, yellow goods, architectural and offshore container industries with laser cutting and profiling equipment. Barrett Offshore Tubes will shortly augment this with additional state of the art plasma cutting machines at the Scunthorpe Service Centre. One of the UK’s largest privately owned independent steel stockholders, Barrett Steel is exceptional as a stockist because of these in-house capabilities to laser profile large circular hollow sections, eg scalloping and weld preparations.
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Press release, September 30, 2012