Current projects and expectations of jobs from emerging industrial developments in the energy and petrochemicals fields have raised fabricator Gulf Heavy Industries’ (GHI) hopes it will continue to have a prominent role.
GHI, which has two heavy fabrication shops in Jubail with a total fabrication capacity of 10,000 tonnes per year, recently installed a new product line for component cleaning using dry ice.
The company fabricates pressure vessels, reactors, columns, towers, drums and heat exchangers. Fifteen per cent of the total turnover comes from heat exchangers. The company’s main focus is Saudi Arabia but it has also taken up jobs outside the kingdom.
“The demand for raw materials and process equipment in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf has increased exponentially due to already awarded mega EPC projects,” said marketing and proposals manager Farooque Khatri. “It is further expected to increase in the first two quarters of 2012 as other projects such as Sadara and Petro-Rabigh’s Phase 2 go on stream,” he added.
The company is now working on several key projects for Saudi Aramco and its mega joint venture with Total called Satorp.
For Aramco’s Shaybah NGL Recovery Facilities, it is fabricating slug catchers under a contract granted by KBR/Samsung, and for Aramco’s Manifa Gas Processing Facilities, the company has been contracted by Saipem to deliver three crude stabilisers.
GHI is also working on Daelim contracts for items meant for the Satorp Jubail Export Refinery Project’s acid gas treatment package 2B. It will deliver an absorber, a stabiliser and two gas water scrubbers. In another Daelim job for the same package, GHI is fabricating a stripper.
GHI has two ongoing contracts from Technicas for the same refinery’s Package 1 which deals with distillation and hydrotreating units. The first job involves supplying two CDU reflux drums and two naphtha total drums for a crude and vacuum distillation unit and four feed surge drums for a naphtha hydrotreater stripper unit. The company will also be supplying an off gas PSA unit.
The second Technicas job for the refinery that GFI is working on involves the supply of two kerosene strippers, four vacuum driers, two low hydrosulphurisation strippers and four naphtha hydrotreater stripper units.
Projects completed
GHI in recent months has completed columns and vessels for a number of Aramco projects including the Manifa Gas Facilities, Karan Gas Facilities, Abu Ali plant upgrade, Diesel Dehydrating Plant, Ras Tanura Refinery’s DHT project, GOSP-3 and GOSP-7, Shaybah Central Processing Facilities and the Rabigh Development.
Other completed projects included those for Sabic’s Saudi Kayan and Petrokemya plants and for Gacic and Sipchem.
GHI also delivered to Qatar Fertiliser Company’s fifth phase project four LP/HP flash drums and two vacuum separators.
Competition strong
The company reported sales of SR76 million ($20.26 million) in 2010 while for the January-June period of this year its sales were SR22 million. Khatri says competition is strong both from local firms and Far Eastern suppliers.
“Executing orders at a low price becomes difficult. We refused to bring down our rates,” said the official.
“Following increasing competition from overseas manufacturers, especially Korean companies, GHI strategically has been targeting large and heavy fabrication jobs in addition to on-site modification, repair of coded equipment and provision of specialised services for process plants during their annual maintenance shutdowns.”
The recently introduced dry ice blasting line will provide a highly effective service for the cleaning of critical and costly industrial components of diverse kinds such as common field equipment, printing rolls, plastic moulds, turbo-machinery components and cooling coils.
The company stresses that dry ice blasting is an effective tool for maintenance planners across industry segments and is much more eco-friendly compared with traditional cleaning methods currently in vogue while also helping clean the remains of hydro-jetting, chemical or abrasive blasting.
The company manufactures its own dry ice.
GHI is a company of the Al Bassam Group which has interests in engineering and contracting, manufacturing, inspection and testing services, water treatment, trading, mining, real estate, automobiles, travel and tourism and investments.
The main shareholder of GHI is the Salah and Mussaed Mohammed Hamd Al Bassam Holding Company (84 per cent). Other shareholders are Salah bin Mohammed Hamd Al Bassam and Mussaed bin Mohammed Hamd Al Bassam (each 4 per cent) and the firm of Salah & Mussaed Bin Mohammed Al Bassam for Petroleum Equipment (8 per cent).
“GHI has adopted a quality assurance programme specifically developed for our operations in Saudi Arabia to ensure compliance with customers’ specifications and international codes,” said Khatri.
“The programme includes requirements for recorded stages of inspection, correction of non-conforming items and total traceability and recording of dates to comply with sections 1 and 8, Divisions 1 and 2, of the ASME boiler and pressure vessel codes and other established standards.” GHI is an ISO 9001:2008 certified company.
