Bulb Flats for Edison Chouest offshore service vessels

05 Dec 2005

Houston builds business with fight-back Gulf shipbuilders.

One of the key suppliers to North America’s offshore industry throughout the hurricane ravaged Gulf of Mexico is Edison Chouest, a customer of growing importance to Corus International Americas Houston, who within a week of Katrina’s worst excesses were pulling in their crews for a clean up and return to work,

With more than 3,400 employees worldwide, the vast majority of whom work and reside in south Louisiana, Chouest specialise in manufacturing the service vessels that provide the food, fuel and other supplies for the hundreds of offshore oil and gas installations that are spread throughout the Gulf. They have two shipbuilding facilities in Louisiana – at Larose and Houma – where most Chouest vessels are designed and built.

As designers, builders, owners and operators the company is in the unique position of being able to optimize vessel design and construction to provide lifetime warranties for each vessel. Chouest lease or charter their vessels to all the major oil companies and the US government. In this capacity, and with their high profile orange and cream offshore fleet, they are recognised as one of the fastest growing offshore service vessel companies in the world - and by the Corus Way principle of “Best customer – best supplier,” are just the right model for a long term business relationship.

With this objective in mind the Houston team has worked hard to make the Chouest business grow and from initially small projects it has now progressed to the point where, with the supply of complete ship sets with material from Corus Special Profiles at Skinningrove, it has become Chouest’s second key supplier of bulb flats for the offshore sector.  By September Houston had supplied complete sets of 150 tonnes each for ten ships and expects to have reached 2,000 tonnes of bulb flats and 750 tonnes of plate overall by the end of 2005.