Having recently taken up new residence in Aberdeen’s Queens Road, Sir Jim's Granite City success story shows no signs of stopping.

45 years ago, Balmoral Group started out manufacturing glass fibre products. When the North Sea developed, we pivoted into oil and gas, building Balmoral Marine to rent buoys, chains and anchors to moored rigs.

When dynamic positioning changed the game in the early 2000s, we sold that business and moved into drill riser buoyancy.

When that market changed in 2015, we shifted again, developing a system for flexible pipes that made us a world leader in deepwater flexible pipe buoyancy, serving offshore markets Brazil, Guyana, the Gulf of Mexico and West and East Africa.

It is this continuous pursuit for excellence, a common characteristic in North East Scotland, that attracted the eye of German engineering group Freudenberg and led to their acquisition of Balmoral Comtec.

It was a deal shaped by subsea heritage, but driven by the future, with Freudenberg wanting to bolster its renewables position. Balmoral Comtec identified floating offshore wind as our next major market nearly a decade ago, a natural evolution of its work supply cable protection systems for fixed bottom wind.

Crucially, Freudenberg has committed to Aberdeen for the long term. They have made no stranger of the esteem in which they hold the North East. They view our city as strategic base. All the manufacturing will remain here, with the vast majority of output exported worldwide - proof that Aberdeen's expertise can and does compete globally.

This sale has allowed the rest of Balmoral Group to reshape itself into a family investment office, further and rightly safeguarding Sir Jim’s legacy for generations to come.

We’ve moved to our new head office to 70 Queens Road, with around 20 staff relocating, and we're now investing more than £50 million with a ‘patient capital philosophy’ - targeting smaller businesses where we can add real, hands-on management value.

Energy remains part of our strategy, as it has done from the outset, but so too does diversification across sectors and geographies. Aberdeen and the North East will always be at the heart of what we do, because it wouldn’t be Balmoral Group if they weren’t.