History
Allseas was founded in January 1985 by Edward Heerema, son of the late Pieter Schelte Heerema, founder of the Dutch offshore construction and installation company Heerema Marine Contractors. Offices subsequently opened in The Hague, Netherlands and Châtel-Saint-Denis, Switzerland.
The company spent its early days developing the concept of dynamically positioned (DP) subsea pipelay. Allseas acquired the former bulk carrier Natalie Bolten in 1985 and converted it for DP pipelay at the Boele shipyard in Bolnes, the Netherlands. The vessel was christened Lorelay in Rotterdam on 26 April 1986.[6] Lorelay immediately entered service and successfully executed her first pipelay contract, the 8-inch, 1.8-km Helder A-B pipeline, for Unocal in the Dutch sector of the North Sea.
In 2007, Allseas announced plans to build a twin-hulled platform installation/decommissioning and pipelay vessel. At 382 m long and 124 m wide, the vessel would be the largest ever built. It was to be named Pieter Schelte after the offshore pioneer Pieter Schelte Heerema, father of Allseas’ owner and founder Edward Heerema, however this naming caused controversy with some politicians and Jewish groups due to Pieter's previous service in the Waffen-SS during World War II, for which he was jailed for three years after the war.[7] In February 2015, Allseas stated that the ship would be renamed Pioneering Spirit.[8]
A criminal trial in the UK in 2016 revealed that Allseas was the victim of a multi-million-pound fraud. In 2011, they invested £73 million with investors led by Luis Nobre claiming to have links to the Vatican and Spanish nobility.[9][10]
In 2018, Allseas announced its intention to build an even larger version of Pioneering Spirit, named Amazing Grace, which is scheduled to be delivered in 2022.[11] However, in July 2020, Allseas announced that it would suspend the project indefinitely.[12]
Allseas is developing systems to recover polymetallic nodules from the ocean floor. In 2022, the company conducted a pilot in which 4,500 tonnes of nodules were collected at a water depth of 4,500 kilometers. [13]
In 2025, Allseas launched a plan for the development of a Small Modular Recator (SMR) tailored for offshore vessels and onshore industrial clusters. The company aims to start production of the first SMR in 2030.[14]
