BGF, one of the largest and most experienced growth capital investors in the UK and Ireland, announces a $18.9m (circa £15m) investment in Sulmara, an independent provider of innovative survey and inspection services to the offshore wind and energy markets.

The Glasgow-headquartered business was founded in 2019 and has grown rapidly to more than $70m (circa £55.8m) annual revenue, delivering a compound annual growth rate of 61% over the last four years, and building a global footprint with additional offices in Aberdeen, Norwich, Houston, Singapore and Taipei.

Sulmara’s rapid growth and success to date has come from using expertise and technology to provide more efficient survey services with a lower carbon footprint. This world-leading position in low-carbon offshore survey is demonstrated by Sulmara being the first services company in the offshore wind sector to be a signatory to the Climate Pledge, and the recent award of carbon neutrality status against the BSI PAS 2060:2014 standard.

BGF’s investment will support Sulmara’s continued growth trajectory, including further investment in new technologies such as uncrewed surface vessels (USVs), autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), next generation geophysical sensors and advanced data products. The ability to use these advanced systems both alongside and with traditional survey vessels improves both quality and turnaround time of data while significantly reducing the environmental impact of offshore projects.

Sulmara is already delivering benefits for major customers around the world including Orsted, Chevron and Seaway7 using remote & innovative systems, and BGF’s investment will enable further complex and low carbon data collection in environments that pose a huge challenge to conventional methodologies.

As part of BGF’s investment, Richard Pugh, Mike Sibson and Davis Larssen will join the board as Non-Executive Directors, collectively adding over fifty years’ experience leading and investing in energy services and technology businesses.

Kevin McBarron, Founder and CEO of Sulmara, said: “BGF’s investment comes at an important moment for the company as we look to build on the success of our technology and innovation efforts to date and to accelerate their introduction to our service offerings. This significant investment of growth capital is a vote of confidence in our strategy from an established investment partner in BGF. The international growth and breadth of services now delivered demonstrates that our approach is also resonating with our clients and supports their need to reduce Scope 3 emissions as the path to NetZero matures.

“We now look forward to investing further in the technology that will allow us to deliver world-class services to support the entire offshore energy sector at a lower carbon cost.”

Richard Pugh, Investor at BGF, said: “The offshore wind sector globally is critical to decarbonising energy and is forecast to grow ten-fold over the next 15 years. Scotland was an early mover in the sector which has supported world-leading experience in delivering and servicing these operations efficiently. Operators are pushing for specialist technology that can step-up to fulfil this growing demand efficiently and with lowest possible carbon footprint. This aligns exactly with Sulmara, whose growth in the last 3-4 years is evidence of both the quality of their operations as well as the ability of Kevin and his team to build a truly global business.

“Working closely with Kevin, Mike, Davis and the rest of the management team, we look forward to supporting the next stage in Sulmara’s exciting growth journey.”