A GLASGOW firm renowned for its survey and related work in rivers, seas and oceans around the world is to expand into the US.

Partrac Ltd, the marine survey and coastal consultancy group founded in 2003, is launching a US subsidiary, Partrac GeoMarine, Inc.

The firm is to be based in Houston, Texas, and will offer the full range of services and products already supplied by its parent company in Europe.

The launch is timed to coincide with the Offshore Technology Conference 2018 to be held in Houston from April 30 – May 3.

Partrac co-founder Sam Athey said: “Houston is the ideal US hub for Partrac GeoMarine. We wanted a city with a highly skilled workforce that reflects the wide range of market sectors that Partrac operates in and is within easy reach of both the Gulf and East coasts of the United States.

“We see these as having the biggest growth potential for our services and products.”

The company stated: “Partrac GeoMarine delivers high quality services and consultancy for complex engineering and environmental projects in challenging marine environments around the world.

“Its market sectors include both conventional and renewable offshore energy (oil and gas, decommissioning, wind, wave and tidal), dredging (contaminated sediments, ports, harbors, rivers, waterways), and coastal engineering (coastal resiliency and coastal consultancy).”

Partrac is known to have worked for many blue-chip clients, who include Eon, Vattenfall Statoil, EDF Energy Renewables and DEME.

Athey added: “Partrac has a number of unique technologies that we want to bring to the US to help solve some of the problems and answer some of the questions.

“For example, our unique sediment tracing and benthic flume technologies have been used around the world to help with issues as diverse as scour around offshore monopiles, freespanning of pipes and cables, and tracking the fate of dredged sediments.”

“We’ve developed our tracers to be benign in the marine environment – we’ve even used them to examine smothering of corals in Hawaii. Our experience gained over the last 15 years collecting Metocean data and working on windfarm installations in European waters – including the world’s first floating windfarm – puts us in a great position to assist the growing offshore renewables market in the US.”