Calash is pleased to announce that it provided commercial due diligence to BGF on its investment into Sulmara, an independent provider of survey and inspection services to the offshore wind and energy markets.
Glasgow-headquartered Sulmara provides uncrewed and remote technology, site characterisation, route development and offshore support services primarily to the offshore wind sector. BGF is investing £15m of capital to support the development of 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 supports improved high-quality data turnaround time while significantly reducing the environmental impact of offshore projects.
Calash provided commercial due diligence on the deal on behalf of BGF. Commercial due diligence included reviewing the target’s technologies and services, providing a market assessment and mapping, reviewing its competitive positioning, reviewing its growth strategy and business plan, as well as carrying out a comprehensive customer referencing exercise.
The Calash team included Iain Gallow, John Corbett, Callum Evett, and James Kirby.
“Sulmara has cutting-edge technology and faces into the rapidly evolving offshore wind market, so Calash’s understanding and deep technical and commercial experience of both proved to be of vital support when assessing our investment into the business.”
Richard Pugh, Investor, BGF
Read the full press release Here
BGF, established in 2011 at the Business Growth Fund, was set up to address the SME funding gap in the UK. It now back hundreds of companies across a variety of investment stages, sectors and regions—with a well-capitalised, evergreen balance sheet of £3bn.
Sulmara was founded in 2019 and has grown rapidly to more than £55.8m (~$70m) annual revenue, delivering a compound annual growth rate of 61% over the last 4 years, and building a global footprint with offices in Glasgow, 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 to a wide range of global clients. The business was the first services company in the offshore wind sector to be a signatory to the Climate Pledge, and has recently achieved independently verified Carbon Neutrality status against the BSI PAS 2060:2014 standard. Sulmara isalready 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.
