UK-based subsea cabling specialist Global Marine Systems, part of the Global Marine Group, has sealed a long-term charter deal with Japan’s NEC Corporation for the 2001-built cable-laying ship Normand Clipper.
.Under a four-year contract, the subsea cable maker said it would bolster its provision of subsea cable systems and meet the expanding demand for new subsea cables due in part to the growing rollout of 5G and the increase in data traffic between data centres in various countries.
The deal marks the first charter for NEC as the company had earlier built subsea cable-laying ships for each of its projects separately.
Normand Clipper is owned by Norway’s Solstad. The ship underwent a major conversion in 2005 to a deepwater subsea construction and umbilical lay DP vessel and has been used by Global Marine to support cable lay operations within the renewable energy and oil and gas sectors. Global Marine will keep the vessel on a contract until May 2026 and has further options available, which could extend the contract for up to 200 days.
Dear Adis, I have been in the industry since 1999 and I have never heard of NEC owning, let alone building cable ships. A new cable ship will cost USA$30-$70M. If they build a ship for each new project, they would not make a profit and there would be an enormous surplus of cable ships in the world! On the contrary, there is concern about the age and availability of cable ships for installation and for maintenance of submarine fibre-optic cable. The Normand Clipper addresses the former concern but not the latter. Kind regards, Julian Rawle, Principal, Julian Rawle Consulting