SGS Acquires Underwater Contractors and Gray Diving Services

Subsea Global Solutions (SGS), world’s leading commercial diving company, has today announced that it has acquired Underwater Contractors Pte. Ltd. (UWC), a prominent commercial diving firm based in Singapore, and Gray Diving Services Pty. Ltd. (GDS), a commercial diving firm based in Sydney, Australia, through separate transactions. With these two tandem acquisitions, SGS expands its global footprint in the Asia-Pacific region beyond Busan, South Korea, where it had a local office for the last seven years and increases the number of its home ports worldwide to 13.

Commenting on the acquisitions, Paul Peters, CEO of SGS said; “This is a significant milestone in the history of SGS. We are absolutely delighted to expand our global footprint to Singapore, a strategic commercial shipping hub where most of our clients visit regularly, as well as to Sydney, a critical port for our cruise business. With well-known brands like UWC and GDS joining our organization, we will solidify our leadership in our market segment and will be able to truly support our clients from these key locations with our own personnel, boats, gear, and equipment. We look forward to joining our forces.”

Echoing Paul Peters, Capt. Satnam Singh Kumar, Executive Director-Asia Pacific for SGS said; “This is an exciting day for SGS, as local presence at these two locations was a fundamentally critical move to create true value for our local and global clientele. Under the exemplary leadership of its founder Michael Gan, UWC has gradually developed into a true power house in the commercial diving industry not only in Singapore, but also on a global scale. With GDS, our initial goal is to build on its very successful marine construction and inspection business, and further enhance its capabilities through our new in-house environmentally-friendly hull cleaning reclaim system which is designed to meet and exceed the regulations.”

Michael Gan, Founder and Managing Director of UWC added; "After many years of competing with one another, we are excited to finally merge with our long-standing friends (SGS) and become part of their successfully growing network. We are proud of what we have built at UWC in Singapore, delivering a consistent and reliable service to our clients since our foundation. This is a new chapter for UWC, one that will position us well to add better value to their operations in today’s uncertain market conditions”.

Russ Gately and Greg Vitnell, Co-owners of GDS commented; “We have a long history of working with SGS, sharing personnel, know-how and expertise on countless joint-projects. We have been assessing our options on how to position GDS for long-term success after our planned retirement and joining our forces with SGS was the natural choice to ensure our business continued to prosper in the years ahead.”