Subsea Expo 2019 – Kirsty Whyte interview with Craig Smith, General Manager at C Kore Systems

What brings you to Subsea Expo 2019?

We're up here in Aberdeen to see our customers and introduce our tools to the subsea market. We're a fairly young company but we're starting to get a lot of traction in Aberdeen so it's always good to come up and see familiar faces and some new ones and to announce new products which is what we're doing this year.

Tell us about the products that you’re showcasing at the event?

We make a small compact tool for testing subsea cables, so electrical tests, Iron continuity, TDR. we've had our main product that does iron continuity for a couple of years now. Last year we brought out TDR and we've come here to announce the sensor monitor. We're testing subsea sensors and well heads, you might have a pressure sensor in a wellhead and you've decommissioned the wellhead so you haven't got a control module anymore so the sensor monitor lets you check pressures and prove the wellhead is safe whilst you’re decommissioning. Or it can fault find when you’ve got a STM but it’s not quite working right.

We've seen an increased confidence in the industry in the last year and the subsea market is continuing to grow, what impact is that having for you and how have Sea Core Systems responded?

It's been good the last couple of years. The downturn wasn't too bad for us because we focus on quite a strong cost saving message. So, our tools save a couple of vessel days typically when they’re deployed. When the downturn came along, although it was tough for the operators and some other companies, it encouraged a lot of interest in C-Kore because we could provide quite a lot of savings to the customers when they needed it. Since the market came back up again, we started seeing more new installation work coming alongside the fault finding we already have, where the tools can be out on new umbilicals when you lay them. Having the market come back up again has introduced that second business stream in again which had disappeared.