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Bibby Marine acquires Bibby Pioneer

4C Offshore | Sue Allen
By: Sue Allen 09/07/2021 Bibby Marine
 Bibby Marine has purchased a new accommodation barge named Bibby Pioneer. This expands the company's fleet of barges to a total of 6, which all offer shoreside accommodation to workers based in remote locations.

Bibby Pioneer is the first barge bought in 15 years, since Bibby Challenge in 2006. Bibby Marine's floating accommodation barges, otherwise known as ‘floatels’, can be transported to any shoreline across the globe to provide accommodation. They are particularly useful for workers employed in projects in distant locations, and offer an environmentally friendly, high quality alternative to building a new structure (removing the need for land camps). Bibby Pioneer is unique as it has boat landing areas and a large deck space making it ideally suited to projects such as wind farms and maintenance as well as other industry support roles.


Nigel Quinn, CEO of Bibby Marine, states: “We are really glad to have added an asset to our fleet which gives us offshore mooring capabilities. This is a sizeable investment to our barge fleet, we anticipate Pioneer doing its first charter for us in the imminent weeks and can see a good number of opportunities in the coming months, we are anticipating it serving our clients and markets well, all over the world for years to come. This has been achieved by the hard-work of Bibby Marine as well as the support of our parent Bibby Line Group.“


Ken Roby, Fleet Manager Operations at Bibby Marine, was involved in the vessel’s purchase. He says: “We’re delighted to welcome a vessel of Pioneer’s quality to our fleet. It’s acquisition is due to collaboration and team working with many departments across Bibby. We are looking at plans to increase the accommodation space to approximately 200 people in single cabins. This will involve building quality accommodation on the remaining flat deck and integrating it into the existing accommodation block, so the barge will look more like a traditional Bibby Marine barge.”


The barge has a fascinating history. Built in 2007 as a straight flat deck barge, in 2011 it was converted to include accommodation and equipment, so it became self-sufficient. Recently it’s been used for laying power cables by Global  Marine, and maintaining them in the North Sea. Prior to this, it was involved in the Costa Concordia salvage in 2014.


The official hand over of the barge took place on Thursday 3rd June in Blythe, Northumbria.


For everything you need to know about the strategies used to support the construction and O&M of offshore wind farms, current and future, including supply and demand for service and accommodation vessels, and helicopters, click here.

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