Metals - The Business Year

Dr. Ziad Awad

Senior Vice President, SNC-Lavalin

With over 30 years of presence in Abu Dhabi, we have been able to build solid working relations with customers such as ADNOC and its group of companies, EGA, TABREED, and others. We have been involved with some significant projects in the oil and gas, mining and metallurgy, infrastructure, and power sectors. Our end-to-end solutions have greatly contributed to the country’s position as an engineering and construction powerhouse. We worked with EGA (EMAL & DUBAL) to help boost the aluminum and industrial sectors where plants today are among the most efficient industrial sites in the world. Our regional office in Abu Dhabi serves customers across different industries, meaning that we are strategically diversified to assist in the future development of Abu Dhabi and the region. We also have our own financial and investment arm, which supports our customers’ needs to structure suitable project finance appropriate to their local requirements.

Gilles Paris

CEO, Arabian Gulf Steel Industries

Three strategic choices in our plant setup give us a major competitive advantage. For steel production (melting), our plant uses 3x30t state-of-the-art induction furnaces from Inductotherm that gives us an annual production capacity of 400,000Mt of billets. Induction furnaces, as opposed to electric arc furnaces or blast furnaces, which are the other two major steel production routes, are far cheaper to commission and operate and are more flexible. In addition to these induction furnaces, we have installed a ladle refining furnace (LRF), which is not usually associated with induction furnace technology. Through the refining process this LRF provides us additional flexibility in the scope of grades we can produce and most importantly allows us far greater flexibility in the quality of raw material we require. Finally, considering the average quality of the domestic scrap processing capacity, ferrous scrap being our major raw material, we have invested in a full fledged scrap processing unit of 450,000Mt yearly capacity, comprising a 2,000hp automobile shredder as well as a 1,000Mt heavy duty scrap shear. These three strategic choices confer us with considerable flexibility and already show clear signs of a competitive production cost in the area in which we operate. In addition, the nominal capacity of our plant was not a random choice. It corresponds to the optimal capacity to cater for domestic and GCC needs, therefore allowing us to use close to full capacity and absorb market ups and downturns whenever they occur.

Stylianos Tsoktouridis

General Manager, Stylianos Tsoktouridis

TALEX is an extrusion company that has established itself as an exclusive provider of customized hard alloys in the aluminum business, specifically for oil and gas, automotive, and aerospace projects. Our greatest accomplishment is the strategic agreement with the Korea Institute of Industrial Technology (KITECH). Together, we have developed customized hard alloys exclusively provided by TALEX and supplied our overseas customers with superior mechanical properties and corrosion resistance compared to other commercial alloys. TALEX has invested more than USD200 million in expanding its capacity and will continue to invest another USD40 million within TALEX to ultimately double its manufacturing capacity. This will mean more jobs created within TALEX and a larger business portfolio.