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We have brought in many better-quali? ed people the last few years, and it has made all the difference in what we’re able to do. “ ” – Gunvor Ulstein, Ulstein Group chief exec grow the top-end products if we don’t deliver the bottom line.” Tight Ranks

Ulstein has also managed to convince the local supply chain, Winter 2015 also saw the employment of a new innovation and of 200 sub-suppliers offering products and services on a and development manager for Ulstein Design & Solutions AS, recent project, half have come from the west coast of Norway. another business of the Group. Frode Sollid ascended to the

When Gunvor spoke to us, the order book of X-bows was still role when he moved on to enable the Rolls-Royce hire. Sollid sizeable, and designs were being built in China and Poland will also manage Ulstein Strategic Innovation Center, a nod to with plans afoot for the United States. The better part of 68 the scale Ulstein has assumed. ordered X-bows have now been sold. Meanwhile, Tore’s roles continue to widen. He chairs the na- “International growth will always be a part of us,” she says, tional Confederation of Norwegian Enterprise, which is busi- adding, “You have to live in the future.” ness’s salary negotiating body in talks with Norway’s unions.

Before a recent slowdown in the oil and gas business, char- Election to the post is a sign of Tore’s grasp of industrial Nor- terer Statoil, a large Norwegian deep-water oil company, had way, the scale of the family enterprise and the Group’s central been a great driver of technological change offshore Norway. role as nation-builder in this Nordic country of