FT Far­fan's head of­fice at Ibis Av­enue, San Juan, has en­tered in­to a joint ven­ture with the Scot­land-based firm, Glob­al Lift­ing Ser­vices, a sup­pli­er and man­u­fac­tur­er of lift­ing equip­ment and ser­vices. Rep­re­sent­ing FT Far­fan at the sign­ing of the agree­ment were: Derek Cum­ming, in­dus­tri­al di­rec­tor; Alan Fitzwilliam, di­rec­tor, fi­nance and busi­ness de­vel­op­ment; and, Wayne Lyons, rig­ging man­ag­er and man­ag­er of the joint ven­ture. The Scot­tish firm was rep­re­sent­ed by Ken­ny Wright, in­ter­na­tion­al di­rec­tor, Unit­ed King­dom, and Gary Chung, gen­er­al man­ag­er, op­er­a­tions, Trinidad.

In a state­ment, FT Far­fan said Glob­al Lift­ing has more than a decade of ex­pe­ri­ence in the North Sea op­er­a­tions. "With ISO, First Point and DNV cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, Glob­al Lift­ing Ser­vices is a world leader in loose and fixed lift­ing gear in­spec­tion, test­ing and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion ser­vices," FT Far­fan stat­ed. "Hav­ing been in op­er­a­tion in Trinidad for the past four years, the Ab­erdeen-head­quar­tered or­gan­i­sa­tion de­cid­ed the time was right to seek out an es­tab­lished lo­cal provider of lift­ing gear and re­lat­ed prod­ucts and ser­vices to part­ner with them to pro­vide the Glob­al Lift­ing Ser­vices range of lift­ing equip­ment to the in­dus­tri­al and ma­rine sec­tors," the state­ment read. FT Far­fan has been an ISO 9001: 2000 cer­ti­fied com­pa­ny since No­vem­ber 2002.

The joint ven­ture, the range of prod­ucts avail­able at FT Far­fan will in­clude the sup­ply of loose lift­ing gear and re­lat­ed ac­ces­sories, wire rope, syn­thet­ic rope, an­chor chains and ma­rine gear, crane blocks, proof test­ing, field in­spec­tion and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion ser­vices, mag­net­ic par­ti­cle in­spec­tion and dye pen­e­trant test­ing. "We are al­ways seek­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties to fur­ther build and grow our busi­ness, and the sign­ing of this agree­ment is tes­ta­ment to this. "We have recog­nised a need for ex­pand­ing the scope of our lift­ing gear ser­vices, with par­tic­u­lar fo­cus on our ma­rine clients. This ini­tia­tive al­lows us to pro­vide them with a wider prod­uct and ser­vice of­fer­ing that meets in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards," Cum­ming said in the state­ment.