The story
Kornelis "Kees" Joustra founded Fugro on 2 May 1962 as Ingenieursbureau voor Funderingstechniek en Grondmechanica, Dutch for "Engineering Company for Foundation Technology and Soil Mechanics". In the wake of the 1970s energy crisis the offshore business came to a standstill. This resulted in the acquisition of its main competitor, McClelland, into Fugro-McClelland in October 1987.
In 1991, Fugro Chance formed in Lafayette, Louisiana as a subsidiary through the acquisition of a small surveying company led by John Chance. By 2007, this subsidiary and two others—John Chance Land Surveys and Fugro GeoServices (formerly John Chance Marine Surveying)—employed 455 in the Lafayette area.
In April 1992, Fugro went public on the Amsterdam Stock Exchange. In 2003, Fugro bought Thales Geosolutions for €147.5 million, its largest acquisition to date. In September 2012, CGGVeritas acquired Fugro's Geoscience Division for €1.2 billion.
The first recipient of Fugro's Herman Zuidberg Award for Innovation was named in 2006, Dariusz Lapucha of Poland who moved to the United States and was working for the Fugro Chance subsidiary at the time of the award. Lapucha garnered the award for his work on an enhanced GPS receiver with a practical resolution of a few inches, which improved "the technical ability and profitability of the Fugro organization". This same year, Fugro Chance was the first recipient of the Fugro Award of Excellence, bestowed by "the chief executive officer of Fugro to the member of the Fugro group of companies that makes the most outstanding contribution during the year"; specifically, Fugro Chance was recognized for their response to hurricanes Ivan, Katrina and Rita.
Fugro purchased the Remote Observation Automated Modeling Economic Simulation (ROAMES) technology from Ergon Energy in 2014.
In January 2015, Royal Boskalis increased its shareholding in Fugro to 20.1%.
In February 2023, Fugro purchased two platform supply vessels (PSVs) Topaz Endurance and Topaz Energy with the aim to re-purpose the vessels to support subsea surveys in the offshore gas, oil, and renewable industries.
In February 2023, Fugro opened a new operations center in St. John's, Canada for controlling offshore survey operations.
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In November 2023, Furgo acquired SEA-KIT International to push the boundaries of USV technology.
In November 2025, the head office moved from Leidschendam to Nootdorp, where a new head office has been built.
From Wikipedia’s article on Fugro, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5