The extra funding is essential for further development of the company’s wave energy technology but failure to secure these funds has now forced the directors to appoint administrators to assess the options for securing the future for the business and its employees. Blair Nimmo and Gary Fraser of KPMG have now been appointed as Joint Administrators of the company and have announced that a total of 40 of the company’s 56 employees will now be made redundant, leaving 13 staff in Edinburgh and just 3 in Orkney.
“The financial situation of the business is such that we have had to take the difficult choice of making a large proportion of staff redundant” Mr Nimmo said. We will be working with the employees and the relevant government agencies to ensure that the full range of support is available to all those affected. We would like to thank the staff for their co-operation during this difficult period. We will do everything we can to seek a buyer who may be able to protect the business, its skilled workforce and see the continuation of the groundbreaking advances Pelamis has made towards renewable energy production.”
Pelamis was established to develop the world’s most advanced wave energy technology and recently received a strong endorsement of its position within the sector from independent consultants following a series of due diligence exercises. This work included detailed assessments of the onward commercial viability of the technology and designs. The combination of over 350 man-years of experience in the team, some 15,000 hours of real grid connected test data and intensive parallel R&D work had given Pelamis a unique platform from which to develop and demonstrate the viability of its technology for commercial deployment at scale.
MSP for Orkney Liam McArthur, among others, has expressed disappointment at the news.
“This is obviously extremely disappointing news, and a real blow for those directly affected” said Mr McArthur. “Pelamis has been in the vanguard of marine renewables for many years, which makes this announcement all the more concerning. I understand that the trigger for the company calling in the administrators has been the withdrawal by the Scottish Government of a loan facility. As well as the jobs at Pelamis, there will be knock-on implications for businesses within the wider sector and economy in Orkney.”
Some of the Pelamis staff employed will be offered new jobs at the new wave energy technology body being set up by the Scottish Government. The Scottish Minister for Business, Energy and Tourism, Mr Fergus Ewing, said that the employees of Pelamis are some of the most advanced in terms of the engineering solutions for the wave energy sector and that Wave Energy Scotland will be able to provide opportunities for some of those experts.
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