Ardent Partnership Creates New Salvage Leader in Eastern Mediterranean

Titan Salvage, a partner in the 2015 formation of Ardent, led the effort to raise the Costa Concordia in Italy, which is considered the largest maritime salvage in history. REUTERS/Tony Gentile

Global maritime salvage company Ardent has teamed up with one of Greece’s largest providers of tugs and a leading expert in pollution control in the region to provide emergency response services in the Eastern Mediterranean.

The partnership combines the expertise of Ardent and two Greece-based companies, Vernicos Tugs and Salvage and Environmental Protection of Engineering.

The three companies signed a cooperation agreement on 20th March 2018 to closely work together on future opportunities and at the same time retain their own corporate identities.

“This cooperation strategically combines one of the world’s leading salvage, emergency response and wreck removal company with the largest provider of tugs and the largest pollution control expert in the region,” said Ardent in its announcement of the partnership. “The combined experience and abilities allow the Ardent-Vernicos-EPE team to handle casualties of all types and sizes, with the shortest response time frames – 24/7, 365 days a year – leading to prompt actions towards successful results.”

Vernicos Tugs and Salvage, is one of the oldest tug and salvage companies in Greece with 150 years of experience. In addition to its salvage experience, the company also owns through its consortiums the largest fleet of tugboats in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Environmental Protection Engineering S.A. (EPE), established in Piraeus in 1977, has successfully responded to more than two thousand pollution incidents over the last four decades, bringing to the table state-of-the-art equipment, specialized vessels, and highly trained and experienced personnel.

Ardent, a global provider of maritime salvage, was formed in May 2015 with the merger of Svitzer Salvage, a part of the Maersk Group, and Titan Salvage, under the Crowley Group. Ardent was created to “offer a more comprehensive solution to the maritime industry and achieves this by diversifying its services from traditional salvage to a full range of emergency management services, project related work, offshore decommissioning and subsea services.”

Ardent’s formation companies are credited with multiple high-profile salvage jobs, including the raising the “Costa Concordia” off Italy (Titan), the refloating the grounded car-carrier “Hoegh Osaka” in the U.K. (Svitzer), extinguishing of the Caribbean Fantasy fire in Puerto Rico (Ardent), and more recently removed the jack-up, “Troll Solution” from the Gulf of Mexico (also Ardent).

“Ardent brings to the partnership experience in the world’s most technically challenging salvage and wreck removal jobs in history, along with a cache of specialized, proprietary equipment – which will now be strategically stored at Vernicos’ various depots, including Perama,“ said Dimitris Theodorou Ardent’s Director EMEA.

“The Alliance allows us to be the most effective provider of marine emergency response services in the region, providing an integrated network of floating assets as well as specialized equipment. It is a joint effort to pro-actively protect our seas by providing emergency response in the Eastern Mediterranean and surrounding regions,” said Jean Benzonana, Vernicos Tugs Chief Executive Officer.

“The synergies between the three companies will guarantee providing timely solutions in responding to marine incidents in the area of Eastern Mediterranean, and safeguarding the environment at the same time”, said Mr. Vasilis Mamaloukas, EPE Director.

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