NEPTUNE P2P GROUP
I
PROFILE
HIGH STAKES ON THE HIGH SEAS When trouble comes knocking at sea or on land, Neptune P2P Group is the company you want to have on your side. Owned and operated by ex-British and French Special Forces operatives. Neptune P2P Group provides a range of highly specialised safety and security services to safeguard people, businesses and their assets. In an exclusive interview with Richard Hagan, Carl Sykes, co-founder and Group Managing Director, pulls back the curtains on the private security industry.
C
ast your mind back to 2009. Piracy off the coast of Somalia in the Indian Ocean, is at an all-time high. Merchant ships transiting one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes are being relentlessly threatened and attacked by armed Somali pirates in small boats. Seafarers and their ships are taken hostage, often for several months or even years at a time while criminal syndicates negotiate eye-watering ransoms with ship-owners for their release. While the world’s naval forces scrambled to find solutions to the piracy issue and to mount a defence, Carl Sykes and his brotherin-law saw the perfect business opportunity. Having both completed their careers in the UK’s Special Boat Service, the two men were trained and experienced in the skills necessary to provide merchant 242
Inside Marine
ships with the protection services they so desperately needed. And thus it was that the early foundations for the company that would become Neptune P2P Group, were laid.
Early days and a strategic merger Neptune Maritime Security was formed in 2009 in the coastal town of Poole on the South Coast of England. In 2012, it relocated its headquarters to Dubai, UAE, in order to be closer to its main areas of operations in the AMEA region. That same year, Neptune Security Group was officially founded. Having previously operated its security teams exclusively in the maritime domain, the company would now expand its