Rolls-Royce is proud to announce that it has just delivered its 1000th UUC underwater mountable thruster. It is the third unit in a series of six being installed on Seadrill’s new mobile drilling ship currently under construction at Samsung Heavy Industries in Korea.

The UUC thruster range is the market leader in mobile drillship propulsion, with over 70% global market share. There are more than a hundred mobile drill ships and semi-submersible drilling rigs operating in every major deepwater oil and gas field around the world today.

John Knudsen, Rolls-Royce, President – Commercial Marine said: “While we are proud of this achievement, the true significance of the milestone is that it demonstrates the trust that our customers place in us to deliver world class propulsion equipment that is mission critical to their successful operations. Developing highly innovative power and propulsion products and systems to support our customers’ needs has always been our focus, and will always be our focus.”

UUC thrusters are used to move a mobile drilling unit from one location to another, and particularly for keeping the unit stationary whilst in continuous dynamic positioning mode during drilling operations, often in extremely deep waters.

As most rigs operate in remote locations a very important feature of the UUC range is that they can be removed and installed underwater without drydocking the vessel.

About Rolls-Royce Holdings plc

Rolls-Royce’s vision is to create better power for a changing world via two main business divisions, Aerospace and Land & Sea. These business divisions address markets with two strong technology platforms, gas turbines and reciprocating engines. Aerospace comprises Civil Aerospace and Defence Aerospace. Land & Sea comprises Marine, Nuclear and Power Systems.
Rolls-Royce has customers in more than 120 countries, comprising more than 380 airlines and leasing customers, 160 armed forces, 4,000 marine customers including 70 navies, and more than 5,000 power and nuclear customers.
Our business is focused on the 4Cs:
- Customer – placing the customer at the heart of our business
- Concentration – deciding where to grow and where not to
- Cost – continually looking to increase efficiency
- Cash – improving financial performance.
Annual underlying revenue was £14.6 billion in 2014, around half of which came from the provision of aftermarket services. The firm and announced order book stood at £73.7 billion at the end of 2014.
In 2014, Rolls-Royce invested £1.2 billion on research and development. We also support a global network of 31 University Technology Centres, which position Rolls-Royce engineers at the forefront of scientific research.
Rolls-Royce employs over 54,000 people in more than 50 countries. Over 15,500 of these are engineers.
The Group has a strong commitment to apprentice and graduate recruitment and to further developing employee skills. In 2014 we employed 354 graduates and 357 apprentices through our worldwide training programmes. Globally we have over 1,000 Rolls-Royce STEM ambassadors who are actively involved in education programmes and activities; we have set ourselves a target to reach 6 million people through our STEM outreach activities by 2020.