At this year’s Offshore Energy exhibition, global deck machinery specialist ACE Winches announced a new 500te Linear Winch to its range of specialized deck equipment. The company will showcase its range of products and services supplied to European clients operating within marine, renewables and oil and gas sectors.
In recent months ACE Winches has delivered equipment and services for a number of key projects for European based companies, worth over £1.4 million. These projects have varied in type, including deck machinery maintenance and inspection, spooling and re-spooling operations, installing and managing a 4-point mooring system and the manufacture of a bespoke twin chain winch package.
The new 500te Linear Winch has been designed, engineered and manufactured at ACE Winches facilities in Aberdeenshire, U.K. The new product is now in its final stages of FAT testing, with mobilization scheduled for mid-December 2016 for its first contract. The contract will conclude in early spring 2017 when the unit will be available for hire.
With more than 25 years of experience, ACE Winches routinely demonstrates its breadth and range of products and services available for hire or purchase. One recent project involved the maintenance and inspection of wire rope which required an ACE spooling winch, associated auxiliary equipment and four ACE Service personnel to undertake the full inspection, cleaning and re-spooling of wire rope prior to it being used for an offshore project. The rope, which had been in service, was inspected for damage, cleaned and re-greased before being re-spooled back onto a drum without torsion in the wire. An in-line NDE inspector was used during the spooling process to assess the wire rope’s usability for the project. A team of operational technicians and engineers from ACE Winches managed the operations whilst witnessed and approved by the client.
Another recent contract was the supply of a 4-point mooring system to a Belgian company, the deck equipment was deployed on a vessel working in the Kashagan field, located in the Kazakhstan’s zone of the Caspian Sea. The equipment supplied included ACE 30te hydraulic winches, a 35te hydraulic drum winch and Safe Area diesel HPUs. (Hydraulic Power Units).
ACE Winches has also designed, manufactured and delivered in the last 12 months a chain winch package to support operations on the Ichthys LNG project. The chain winch package will be used to pull the heaviest chains ever installed by the client, with a diameter of 178mm. Additionally, ACE Winches manufactured two 50 Tonne WLL twin Chainlifter Hydraulic winches along with a 576kW Containerized Safe Area Electric Hydraulic Power Unit (HPU) and two 76kW Containerized Safe Area Electric HPU’s for the project.
Alfie Cheyne, CEO, ACE Winches said, “We have invested substantially in both our products and services. In challenging times this is extremely important and these projects are testament to the hard work put in from the team.
“For a high quality and cost effective solution for your offshore projects, the team will be on the hand throughout Offshore Energy to meet with companies that have a requirement for engineered deck machinery solutions encompassing electrical and electronic control systems.”