Bahrain Rubber Company (BRC) has revealed plans to double production of polyurethane items, manufacture more tyre fillings and set up a new unit for making and recoating printing rollers.

General manager Mohammed Khalil Marhoon said good demand from aluminium and steel mills had prompted BRC to expand production of polyurethane items from the current level of 36 tonnes per year.

The company, part of the Haji Hassan Group, has been developing polyurethane goods since 1996 and is now one of a few plants in the Gulf to do so. Until it started making them, Bahrain companies used to send their rollers to Europe for recoating, Marhoon said.

BRC has specialised in covering rollers by casting for aluminium and steel mills to their specifications. The company makes customised products including forklift tyres, truck shoes, pigs for oil pipelines, pump seats, couplings, seydel rollers, spinning wheels and cutting bars.

The company is in technical collaboration with the British companies Noterdom and CIL for the past six years. Polyurethane raw material is sourced in England and Marhoon said the company was interested in introducing new manufacturing methods and new products in the near future.

BRC has been producing tyre refills for less than a year but the product, having been well accepted in the Bahrain market, the company is set to manufacture more of the same, said the official. The material supplied by BRC is special grade soft rubber which acts like a cushion within the tyres making them "puncture proof", explained Marhoon. The material is being used in tyres for forklifts and earth-moving vehicles. The collaborator in the project is CIL and the technology two decades' old. Production is now about a tonne per month, and one of the buyers is Aluminium Bahrain (Alba). BRC is in discussions with a German company for establishing a unit to manufacture and recoat printing rollers. A significant number of printing presses in the Gulf use German machinery and have their rollers sent to Germany for recoating. The facilities will have the capability to deal with a variety of printing machines including Heidelberg, Roland, Komori, Mitsubishi and Hashimoto.

Since inception in 1993, the company has been producing rubber products for a host of applications. The range supplied to the oil and gas industry includes 'O' rings, rubber bushes, expansion joints, grommets, mud flaps and engine mountings. The company has also been designing rubber vibration control devices and pads.

Supplies to the construction and industrial spares sector include bellows, mountings, clamp rubbers, vibration insulators, sealing rings, rubber parts for elevators and spares for heavy duty vehicles and machines used in various industries.

"We have contracts with Arabian Ship Repair Yard (Asry), Gulf Petrochemical Industries Company (GPIC) and Alba for the supply of construction and industrial spare parts," said Marhoon. Approximately half the production in this category goes to Bahrain and the remainder to Saudi Arabia, where the company has an agent, Waha Electrical Transformers. Smaller supplies have been going to Kuwait.

The company carries out rubber lining jobs for marine ships, tanks, pipes, flanges and valves.

"The old valves for controlling liquids are reconditioned with new seals and lining. Bahrain Rubber Company has specialised in this highly technical field and conducts leakage tests by passing high voltage current," a company statement said.

The company uses natural rubber imported from Malaysia and synthetic rubber from Germany. Some of the products it manufactures, such as fenders, are made exclusively of natural rubber.

BRC teams are regularly maintaining power stations, desalination plants, shipyards and petrochemical companies. The company has been awarded the ISO 9002:1994 certificate by Lloyd's Register Quality Assurance for the quality management system applicable to the manufacture of rubber and polyurethane products including gaskets, bellows, sealing rigs, refurbishment of industrial process rollers, printing rollers and relining of pipe work. It is also the recipient of the Bahraini Prime Minister's award for excellence in industry.