Olof Nilsson, the company's contract manager, says its acquisition marks a further stage in growth of the Swedish organisation, which presently maintains over 100 full time staff providing seabed mapping services in coastal as well as offshore deepwater areas.

MMT's current offshore undertakings include surveys of 636km of seabed for possible new pipelines along the Norwegian continental shelf on behalf of state owned Gassco, supplier of natural gas to Europe, while in the Danish sector of the North Sea it has recently been retained on long term contract by Dong Energy Oil & Gas for pipeline inspection work.

The Danish contract calls for annual inspection of 770km of pipelines with work comprising deployment of an ROTV together with high resolution sidescan sonar and mapping with an EM 710 multibeam sounder. According to Olof Nilsson, MMT's survey vessel MV Franklin, which earlier this year completed other surveys for the MCA covering the approaches to Stornoway in the Hebrides, will be used for the project.