Hydro Group
Designs and manufactures subsea connectivity products, including production umbilicals, connectors, termination assemblies, and tethers.
Hydro Group is a designer and manufacturer of bespoke subsea connectivity solutions, based in Aberdeen, Scotland. The company sums up its role as design, engineer, manufacture, test and certify, and it supplies complete subsea electrical and optical interconnect packages rather than isolated parts. With four decades of commercial experience and industry knowledge behind it, Hydro Group is described as a global leader in subsea connectivity engineering and innovation, and its bespoke cables and connectors are precision-engineered and tested to withstand the harshest environmental conditions.
The product range covers cables, including a stock list of standard cables, together with connectors, penetrators, glands, assemblies, terminations and moulds. Around these sit four service lines: design and engineering, bespoke manufacture, hydrostatic testing, and support and maintenance. Testing is carried out in-house, and the group has extended the hydrostatic testing facilities at Hydro Group Systems Inc in the USA, giving it pressure testing capability on both sides of the Atlantic. Quality, health, safety and environmental management is presented as a distinct function alongside engineering and manufacturing.
Three sectors are served. Oil and gas is a core market, defence and nuclear is a second, and marine renewable energy is the third and the one the company highlights most prominently on its own site. Work referenced by the company includes supporting KIOST with a renewable energy project on Jindo Island in South Korea, an ambitious project it says will create a step change for the wave energy industry, and supporting Forum Energy with innovative product development for its latest submarine rescue vessel. Hydro Group has also launched what it describes as the first-ever Fibre Optic Manned Penetrator for submersibles, developed new cable jacketing materials, and introduced new cost-effective connectivity solutions for subsea applications.
Manufacturing investment is a running theme in how the company describes itself. It completed a final investment phase with a high-speed braider capable of handling cables up to 100mm in diameter, work presented under the banner of heavier, longer and stronger cable manufacture and framed as investing in the future of cable manufacture. Other published updates cover increased efficiency in bunching, successful project delivery in challenging times, and a run of manufacturing milestones marked as forty-plus years of manufacturing excellence. Hydro Group is part of the Trexon family of companies, which has itself been expanding through acquisition, and the group maintains its own locations, business partner network and downloadable library of product documents, case studies, video and certificates for engineers specifying subsea interconnect.