Piriou Sets Up in La Reunion Island
As a part of its strategy “Be where our customers need us,” Piriou group, with the partnership of Laurent Virapoulle of Peche Avenir group, has set up in La Reunion island and created Piriou Reunion, a services company to shipowners.
Piriou Reunion will be located in Port Ouest, in the slipway area, and operational in February 2018 to welcome all types of vessels up to 60m and 650t whatever their activity, fishing, support or defense for naval maintenance or repair, afloat or in dry dock. Piriou Reunion facilities will feature workshops designed and equipped for activities including mechanical and diesel engineering, piping, boiler making and welding.
Benefiting both from Piriou group's logistic support and its design office, Piriou Reunion will mainly rely on skills of the local Reunionese companies’ network.
The Piriou group thus strengthens its presence in an area where it has already created strong relationships for over 20 years in the sectors of fishing, military and towing including:
- Mafate and Cilaos tugs delivered to the Abeilles company in 1998
- Seven 55 to 60m longliners built since 2001 for Cap Bourbon, Pêche Avenir, Armas Pêche, Sapmer and Comata shipowners
- Refit of Le Malin in 2011
- VB Volcan tug delivered to Boluda in April 2017
- B2M multi-mission vessel Champlain delivered the French Navy and based in Port des Galets since June 2017
- Delivery and In Service Support of polar logistic ice breaker L’Astrolabe to the TAAF -Austral and Antarctic French territories-, IPEV -Paul-Emile Victor Institute- and the French Navy in September 2017
Vincent Faujour, Piriou group CEO, says: “Following the creation of our shipyards in Nigeria in 2004, in Vietnam in 2006 and Algeria in 2013, we carry on with our international development. Our know-how regarding naval repair crossed with our local partnership with Laurent Virapoulle, one of our most faithful customers, will enable us to offer quality and neighborhood service to our long-time customers as well as to all shipowners that require technical support in La Reunion. We are setting up here very humbly but with strong confidence, in an area of great importance for the Piriou group where orders and new vessels deliveries have come one after another for 20 years.”
Virapoulle says: “Peche Avenir has decided to create a partnership with Piriou group, as we believe that La Reunion can become a naval repair hub with regional scope. Many skills are already locally located: this allowed us to carry out the complex refit and modernization program of Clipperton and Manohal. Clipperton and Manohal were converted into deepfreezer pelagic longliners in la Reunion to develop a new sector for the Reunionese fishing industry.
“The implantation of Piriou Reunion will enable to insure the increase of this sector in partnership with the local companies while offering foreign and Reunionese shipowners a wide range of quality services. Following the investment in building the innovative longliner Le Saint-André with Chantiers Piriou, the purchase of a fleet of 24m longliners and an investment to modernize it, Peche Avenir carries on, alongside with Piriou Group, its policy of investments in the sectors of development of the Reunionese maritime economy.” In 2016, Le Saint-André, the first longliner featuring ice class hull and equipped with a diesel electric propulsion, was the first French vessel fishing toothfish in Antarctica. It was built in Concarneau-France by Chantiers Piriou in 2009.
The products and services herein described in this press release are not endorsed by The Maritime Executive.