Port of Dundee business shuts its doors as company ‘consolidates’

A Port of Dundee business has closed its doors after deciding to “consolidate” to its other Scottish sites.

Augean North Sea Services opened its Dundee site in 2017 to support decommissioning work.

It brought the first major decom project to the city, with the arrival of the Shell Curlew floating production, storage and offloading vessel in 2019.

The work providing specialised industrial cleaning services had around 200 people on site at its peak.

Augean said it had “seen it all” in the last seven years in Dundee.

Augean closing Dundee workshop

But of late just three workers were based at Shed 36. Augean closed its Dundee site  on Wednesday.

A spokesperson for Augean said: “The Augean North East Scotland (ANES) facility in Dundee came to the end of its lease.

“A decision was made to consolidate the company’s operations to the three existing sites in Aberdeen as well as the eco centre in Peterhead.

“In recent months only three members of staff have been employed at the Dundee site.

“Two have left the company of their own accord and the third has received specialist training and is being redeployed.”

Augean operates across the hazardous waste management, oil and gas, nuclear and radioactive sectors.

The work on Shell’s Curlew was meant to last three months, but the distinctive vessel ended up being docked in Dundee for a year.

Complexities of the work meant Augean could not fully clean the vessel. Shell then arranged for it to be dismantled in Norway.

At the end of 2020, it cut around a third of its North Sea Services workforce saying Covid-19 and the oil price slump hit “heavily impacted” sales.

Port lines up new tenant

It made headlines again in 2021 when the company was subject of a bidding war between a subsidiary of banking giant Morgan Stanley and Eleia, which bought the company for around £390 million.

Peter Marioni, Augean’s chief operating officer for north-east Scotland, said: “I would like to say a big thank you to everyone involved with the preparations for exiting Dundee.

“This is a bittersweet moment for Augean but we are excited for the future and evolving within the decommissioning industry.

“We are currently developing and advancing our alternative NORM (naturally occurring radioactive material) facilities in Peterhead and Aberdeen.”

A Port of Dundee spokesperson said: “Augean have taken the operational decision to close their Dundee facility.

“The Port of Dundee is in the process of reallocating the space to a new tenant.”