Aker to target nuclear work.

Byline: Karen Mclauchlan

Engineering giant Aker Kvaerner today said it had completed a restructuring of its Teesside-based business as it reported its latest financial performance.

Aker Kvaerner Engineering Services, which is headquartered in Stockton, has seen its engineers reduced from around 1,800 to 500 on the back of re-focusing its business.

At the end of last year it sold its workshop and maintenance business to industrial services group Hertel (UK).

The deal, for an undisclosed sum, involved about 120 jobs based at Wilton and 40 on Humberside.

The company said: "We have exited the onshore, low margin maintenance business, including related workshops."

Bosses said the main focus of the division's operations would be the more profitable nuclear industry.

It added: "In this market there is a significant need for decommissioning and clean-up programmes.

"Several such programs in the next few years are already planned."

The Aker Kvaerner group reported a rise fortunes for the fourth quarter of 2006.

EBITDA - earnings, stripping out one-off costs - rose to pounds 65.1m from pounds 56.35m.

Its process division, which takes in AK Engineering services, saw its EBIDTA rise by 10% during the period to pounds 8.12m.

EBIDTA for the year in the division, compared to 2005, rose by 79% to pounds 923m.

Order intake for the fourth quarter of 2006 was "two times higher" than the same period in 2005, although full year order levels were around the same level of the full year.

At the end of last year, AK Engineering Services was awarded an additional contract to deliver a pounds 20m upgrade at Northumbrian Water's Bran Sands site.

The second major contract which was awarded to the firm was for Aker Kvaerner to provide process requirements for the latest improvement scheme at the Bran Sands Effluent Treatment Centre at Teesport.

The award-winning centre treats domestic sewage together with the waste from several industrial plants operating in the surrounding area.