Bibby Marine adds new floating accommodation barge to fleet

Bibby Marine has purchased a new accommodation barge named Bibby Pioneer. The barge will expand their fleet of barges to a total of 6, which all offer quality shoreside accommodation to
workers, based in remote locations.

This is the first barge bought in 15 years since the Bibby Challenge in 2006. Bibby Marines floating accommodation barges, otherwise known as ‘floatels’, can be transported to any shoreline across
the globe to provide accommodation. They are particularly useful for workers employed in projects in distant locations, and offer an environmentally friendly, high quality alternative to building a new structure (removing the need for land camps).

Bibby Pioneer is unique as it has boat landing areas and a large deck space making it ideally suited to projects such as windfarms and maintenance as well as other industry support roles.

Nigel Quinn, CEO states: “We are really glad to have added an asset to our fleet which gives us offshore mooring capabilities. This is a sizeable investment to our barge fleet, we anticipate Pioneer doing its first charter for us in the imminent weeks and can see a good number of opportunities in the coming months, we are anticipating it serving our clients and markets well, all over the world for years to come. This has been achieved by the hard-work of Bibby Marine as well as the support of our parent Bibby Line Group.“

Ken Roby, Fleet Manager Operations was involved in the vessel’s purchase says: “We’re delighted to welcome a vessel of Pioneer’s quality to our fleet. It’s acquisition is due to collaboration and team working with many departments across Bibby. We are looking at plans to increase the accommodation space to approximately 200 people in single cabins. This will involve building quality accommodation on the remaining flat deck and integrating it into the existing accommodation block, so the barge will look more like a traditional Bibby Marine barge.”

The barge has a fascinating history. Built in 2007 as a straight flat deck barge, in 2011 it was converted to include accommodation and equipment, so it became self-sufficient. Recently it’s been
used for laying power cables and maintaining them in the North Sea and was also involved in the Costa Concordia salvage in 2014. The official hand over of the barge took place on Thursday 3rd June in Blythe, Northumbria.