ENGINEERING giant Amec Foster Wheeler, which is being taken over by Wood Group, has won a contract worth up to £160 million with a partner to work on the Sellafield nuclear plant in Cumbria.
The Operations Site Works joint venture owned by Amec Foster Wheeler and Interserve has been appointed to support the care and maintenance effort at the plant for four years.
The award provides a vote of confidence in the two firms, which have been working at Sellafield for some time.
Amec Foster Wheeler is already providing services such as helping to clean up hazardous facilities and waste management there.
The contract win underlines the appeal of the firm to Aberdeen-based Wood Group.
Led by chief executive Robin Watson, Wood wants to acquire Amec Foster Wheeler to increase its exposure to growth markets such as energy and environmental engineering.
This would help reduce its reliance on the North Sea oil and gas market, which has been under pressure amid the downturn triggered by the fall in crude prices since 2014.
The head of London-based Amec Foster Wheeler’s clean energy business, Clive White, said it had a strategy to extend the range of services provided at Sellafield.
The site of the first UK nuclear reactor to be decommissioned, Sellafield also handles waste from other facilities.
On Tuesday the competition watchdog signalled it was likely to accept proposals made by Amec Foster Wheeler to address concerns about the impact of it being taken over by Wood on the North Sea oil services market.
Amec Foster Wheeler has put the bulk of its North Sea business up for sale. Four North American firms are thought to be in the running to buy the operations concerned.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here