Gulf Importers & Exporters

Nass trying for overseas jobs

A Nass worker at the fabrication yard in Bahrain

Bahrain’s Nass Mechanical Contracting Company, which fabricates equipment required by overseas projects in sectors including oil and gas, power and petrochemical, says it is looking seriously at upgrading itself as an EPC (engineering, procurement and construction) company for the Middle East.

“We wish to pitch ourselves as a company providing services from design to manufacturing and erection, commissioning and handover. We have capabilities from the standpoints of yard equipment and staff to undertake larger jobs than we are now performing,” said GK Roy, general manager of Nass Mechanical, also known as Nass Industrial Services.

“We have executed high-profile jobs for projects overseas and at home and we believe we can serve as a hub for the Middle East in our field of work.”

Roy: Bahrain potentially an EPC hub

The company’s business portfolio includes general plant construction, packaged units, oil and gas refineries and petrochemical, power, cement and water desalination and wastewater plants.

From its fabrication yard at Hidd Industrial Area, the company is currently working on several jobs for Sadara, the joint venture between Saudi Aramco and Dow Chemical. These include fabrication of nine tanks and delivery of pipe spools and pipe supports for the propylene oxide plant in Jubail.

In recent months it accomplished for the Maaden aluminium plant in Ras Al Khair work on two gas treatment centres, fabricated structural equipment including a stack and supplied ducting networks, bag filter modules and a material handling system, among other equipment.

For Hyundai Heavy Industries, contractor for Al Sabiyah Power Plant in Saudi Arabia, the company fabricated equipment including a stack, diverters, elbows, silencer ducts and transition ducts. The material, totally weighing 2,400 tonnes, was delivered to site by barge from the company’s jetty. Other jobs for Hyundai included doing inlet ducts and diverters for a Tihama power plant project in Saudi Arabia.

For STBLOP, contractor for an offsites and utilities project in Saudi Arabia, Nass Mechanical Contracting was entrusted with carrying out all mechanical works for the process and utility units including the supply,  fabrication and erection of process equipment such as vessels, columns, drums, heating coils and tanks. The number of pressure vessels was 22 with shell thickness ranging from 8 mm to 35 mm, design pressure of 8 to 50 bar and diameters from 1,600 mm to 4,000 mm. The Bahrain company was required to fabricate 30 storage tanks of diameters 3 m to 38 m.

Nass Mechanical Contracting is a leading supplier for several industries

It supplied tank parts for Daewoo required for a Saudi crude oil project and a range of fabricated equipment for a Kuwait power plant. For a project in Australia, Nass Mechanical Contracting delivered diverters.

It delivered two shiploaders to Qatar for Voest Alpine Materials Handling GmbH, Austria, and 12 dredgers to Iraq for the client Ellicott of the US.

Nass Mechanical Contracting has done several major jobs in Bahrain including ones for Sulb, the steel plant, and Tatweer, the petroleum company.

 

BUSINESS TALKS

“We’re talking to parties in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq and Qatar and are interested in fabricating an evaporator for a desalination plant in the US and shipping process equipment to Africa,” said Roy. “We’re considering mergers and acquisitions so we can play a bigger role in our business field and make Bahrain a hub for EPC jobs.”

Roy, who took over as general manager in 2013, says Nass Mechanical Contracting has obtained approvals from the Dow-Aramco partnership in Sadara and is seeking overall approval from Saudi Aramco and Sabic.

“We have cutting-edge capabilities and well-qualified and experienced welders and fabricators whose skills are upgraded on the job,” he said.

 

FACILITIES

The company has executed several major jobs in Bahrain and overseas

The company uses structural steel, duplex steel, carbon steel, low-temperature carbon steel and low alloy steel in its operations.

The Nass complex has a yard area of 21,080 sq m and a shop area of 7,238 sq m with three bays. Included are blasting and painting areas and a handling facility with eight OHT cranes and one tower crane. Equipment and machinery include a CNC plate rolling machine of 4,800 mm x 110 mm capacity as well as CNC plasma/oxyfuel plate cutting machine (16,000 mm x 3,000 mm x 220 m), a CNC water jet cutting machine ( 6,000 mm x 2,500 mm x 60 m) (stainless steel) and a CNC section rolling machine of 200 tonnes.

Other equipment available is a column and boom welding machine (8,000 mm x 600 mm), a gantry crane, a CNC press break and a semi-automatic tank girth welder.

The company’s marine jetty has a frontage of 1.4 km with 6 m deep channels and an own barge facility to ship the modular plant system and ODC shipments to the project site anywhere in the world. It has deployed dedicated teams for engineering, quality assurance and quality control, an independent health, safety and environment team and a dedicated operation team.