Following signs the industrial market is improving after a prolonged recessionary period, Gulf Heavy Industries Company (GHI) has announced it will re-start its diversification and expansion plans.|
These include focusing on large fabrication jobs involving very thick products and strengthening its construction division to take up on-site erection of storage tanks and plant shutdown activities, said marketing and proposals manager Farooq Khatri. The company will focus on specialised services such as piping and tank cleaning and the manufacture of specialised skids and value-added products. It is considering entering into joint ventures or signing up technical partners a decision for which will be taken during the first quarter of 2010.
Khatri said increasing competition from overseas manufacturers, particularly Korean companies, had forced GHI to diversify and expand its activities.
Discussing business performance, Khatri said 2009 was not very encouraging for the company as many mega projects were postponed resulting in fewer new orders. However, it implemented during the year several contracts it won before the recession began to bite.
"GHI is optimistic for 2010 and 2011 as the mega projects have been re-initiated and implementation work has already started in some of them," Khatri said. GHI received orders in the third quarter of 2009 for Manifa CPF, Manifa Gas and Karn gas projects.
GHI, part of the Al-Bassam Group, is a fully Saudi-owned company that makes pressure vesssels, reactors, columns, towers, drums, storage tanks and heat exchangers for the oil and gas, petrochemical, chemical and power and desalination industries.
The company has been in business for more than 25 years. Its factory equipment includes a rolling machine that can be used on CS plates of 200 mm thickness. GHI is approved by Saudi Aramco for pressure vessels fabrication up to 150 mm thickness and by Kuwait National Petroleum Company for thickness up to 100 mm.
It is an approved vendor for top-drawer companies including Saudi Aramco, Sabic, Sasref, KNPC, Saudi Electricity Company, SWCC, Kuwait Oil Corporation, Petrochemicals Industries Company and Marafiq plus major EPC companies.
