Global Marine Group is a British-headquartered specialist provider of installation, maintenance and repairs of submarine communications cable for the telecommunications, oil & gas and deep sea research industries. To this end, they operate their own a fleet of vessels, ROVs and specialised subsea trenching and burial equipment. It was established in 1999 when

Global Crossing Global Crossing Limited was a telecommunications company that provided computer networking services and operated a tier 1 carrier. It maintained a large backbone network and offered peering, virtual private networks, leased lines, audio and vid ...

purchased

British Telecom BT Group plc (formerly British Telecom) is a British Multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered in London, England. It has operations in around 180 countries and is the largest provider of fixed-li ...

and Cable & Wireless marine operations and merged them.Global Marine Systems sold ''

Ships Monthly Kelsey Media Ltd is a magazine publisher and trade fair company based in Yalding, England. Founded in 1989, it has bought and sold many publications over the years, including former Bauer Media Group magazines ''Sea Angler'', ''Car Mechanics'' ...

'' May 2025 page 16 In 2004, Global Marine Systems was purchased by Bridgehouse Marine and was completely restructured. In September 2014, Global Marine was acquired by HC2, and in 2020 by JF Lehman & Partners. Historically, the company has a legacy of over 160 years of cable installation, stemming from the first telegraph cables laid in the 1850s. CS Sovereign

Global Marine has a worldwide presence, with offices in

Chelmsford Chelmsford () is a city in the City of Chelmsford district in the county of Essex, England. It is the county town of Essex and one of three cities in the county, along with Colchester and Southend-on-Sea. It is located north-east of London ...

, UK and Singapore; depots in Portland, UK; Bermuda; Victoria, Canada;

Batangas Batangas, officially the Province of Batangas ( ), is a first class province of the Philippines located in the southwestern part of Luzon in the Calabarzon region. According to the 2020 census, it has a population of 2,908,494 people, making ...

, Philippines and

Batam Batam, officially the City of Batam (, not to be confused with ''Batam Kota'', a kecamatan, district within this city), is the largest List of regencies and cities of Indonesia, city in the Indonesian province of Riau Islands. The city administra ...

, Indonesia; Ships are stationed around the world to support both installation of new cables and the maintenance and protection of existing cables. The company is also involved in joint ventures with

China Telecom China Telecom Corporation Limited (CT) is a Chinese telecommunications company. It is one of the publicly traded red chip companies of the state-owned China Telecommunications Corporation. The company's H shares have been traded on the Sto ...

and

Huawei Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. ("Huawei" sometimes stylized as "HUAWEI"; ; zh, c=华为, p= ) is a Chinese multinational corporationtechnology company in Longgang, Shenzhen, Longgang, Shenzhen, Guangdong. Its main product lines include teleco ...

. Since 2002 Global Marine has become increasingly active in the installation of submarine power cables and gained significant market share in the European Offshore Renewables market, in addition to undertaking a number of large power interconnect projects. The company was responsible for installing the cables connecting the turbines on a host of

windfarm A wind farm, also called a wind park or wind power plant, is a group of wind turbines in the same location used to produce electricity. Wind farms vary in size from a small number of turbines to several hundred wind turbines covering an exten ...

projects including Blythe (one of the first trial farms),

Horns Rev 1 Horns Rev is a shallow sandy reef of glacial deposits in the eastern North Sea, about off the westernmost point of Denmark, Blåvands Huk.

(the first major commercial

windfarm in Denmark Denmark was a pioneer in developing commercial wind power during the 1970s, and today a substantial share of the wind turbines around the world are produced by Danish manufacturers such as Vestasthe world's largest wind-turbine manufactureralo ...

), Thornton Bank, Kentish Flats and others. To support this business Global Marine formed a subsidiary in 2011 called Global Marine Energy. The development of the energy business included the opening of a new office in

Middlesbrough Middlesbrough ( ), colloquially known as Boro, is a port town in the Borough of Middlesbrough, North Yorkshire, England. Lying to the south of the River Tees, Middlesbrough forms part of the Teesside Built up area, built-up area and the Tees Va ...

and the construction of a specialist vessel, ''Cable Enterprise''. The subsidiary company was sold to

Prysmian Group Prysmian S.p.A. is a multinational company with headquarters in Milan, Italy, specialising in the production of electrical cable for use in the energy and telecom sectors and for optical fibres. Prysmian is present in Europe with 48 plants, 23 ...

, the world’s largest cable manufacturer at the time of sale, in September 2012. Global Marine today focuses primarily on supporting the telecoms, oil & gas and deep sea research markets. In March 2025, Global Marine Systems was purchased by

Keppel Corporation Keppel Ltd., previously Keppel Corporation (or Keppel Corp) is a Singaporean company headquartered in Keppel Bay Tower, HarbourFront. The company consists of several affiliated businesses that specialises in property, infrastructure and asset ...

Group historical achievements

* 1988 Installed first transatlantic fibre optic submarine cable, TAT-8, * 1989 Installed first private transatlantic fibre optic submarine cable, PTAT * 1990 Installed first transpacific fibre optic submarine cable, NPC * 1992 First to plough unarmoured cable over 1,000 km in one continuous operation between Brunei and Singapore * 1994 First to post-lay bury to 2,000 metres, Pacific Rim West * 1995 First to bury cable to 10 metres and 4 metres in rock, APCN * 1997 Installed first dedicated internet cable between US and UK * 2003 Achieved deepest water ploughing to a depth of 1699m on the Svalbard system installed 1,350 km within the Arctic Circle. * 2010 Achieved deepest recorded cable burial at Port Klang in Malaysia achieving 14 meters on a power cable connecting to the Island of Pulau Ketam * 2014 Global Marine was awarded the Order of Distinction by RoSPA in recognition of the company's 15th consecutive year of outstanding occupational health and safety results. * 2014 Global Marine installed the 2014 Uninett project in Svalbard Norway, delivering the world's most northerly fibre optic cable system, deep within the Arctic Circle. To date Global Marine has installed over 300,000 km of subsea cable, 23% of the world's total. In addition to this Global Marine with joint venture partners has performed 35% of maintenance operations on world fibre optic cables.

References

{{reflist Companies based in Chelmsford Engineering companies of the United Kingdom 1999 establishments in England