Decommissioning 24km of chain and wire at South Harbour

Customer brief

John Lawrie Metals (JLM), working alongside moorings specialist InterMoor, needed a port to handle the safe and efficient discharge of mooring systems, including chain, wire and ancillary components, returned from the decommissioning of Ithaca Energy’s Stella and Alba fields.

Challenges

Mooring system discharges of this scale, with almost 14km of chain and more than 10km of mooring wire, require appropriate infrastructure, including extensive laydown space and deepwater berths. 

Efficiency is just as critical, with every vessel call requiring as seamless a turnaround as possible to minimise costly downtime, and allow vessels to return offshore quickly.

Port of Aberdeen’s solution

Port of Aberdeen’s South Harbour was chosen for the project, providing a dedicated project area for the safe handling of materials.

During six vessel calls between July and August 2026, JLM successfully managed the discharge of:

• 13,896m of mooring chain
• 10,740m of mooring wire
• Approximately 200 tonnes of ancillary components

Each discharge was completed ahead of the planned vessel schedules, allowing the vessels to return offshore sooner than anticipated.

Dave Weston, CEO of John Lawrie Metals, said: “Excellent collaboration led to a timely and efficient discharge on each port call. As always, the facilities and support from the team at Port of Aberdeen were excellent.”

Why it matters

This project demonstrates why South Harbour is ideally suited to decommissioning and moorings-handling activity at scale, giving operators and their supply chain partners a single location to manage discharge and temporary storage of recovered material across multiple vessel calls.