Aker Solutions boosts manufacturing capacity for surface products
Wednesday, Jul 01, 2009
Aker Solutions is today officially opening its significantly modernised and expanded manufacturing facility for surface trees and wellheads in Batam, Indonesia. The expansion is part of Aker Solutions' long-term strategy to increase its presence in the rapidly growing oil and gas markets in the Asia Pacific region.
Source: Aker Solutions Aker Solutions has invested USD 17 million into the expansion and upgrade of the Batam manufacturing centre. As a result, manufacturing capacity for production and assembly of surface wellheads and trees has increased by more than 50 percent.
Building space at the site has been expanded from 4 200 to 11 200 square metres to cover a new administrative building with full management support, machine workshop with 11 new machines, test and assembly workshop as well as a new warehouse. In total, the Batam site area has expanded to 21 800 square metres.
Surface trees and wellheads is production equipment that is being used either onshore or at surface production platforms in shallow waters offshore.
"Our business for surface products, which are manufactured at Batam, has achieved a 25 percent revenue growth annually over the past years. It is a cost efficient operation," says Egil Martinussen, president - Asia Pacific, Aker Solutions. "With the expansion and modernisation of our facility completed, it is now able to meet the expected market growth"'
The expansion of Batam's manufacturing facility was completed in 500 000 man-hours with zero loss time incidents (LTI). This was achieved on the back of the plant's existing two million man-hours of zero LTI. Aker Solutions has been present in Batam, Indonesia since 1995.
Speaking at the official opening of the Batam facility, Egil Martinussen said Aker Solutions has had ambitious expansion plans since 2007 to establish and ramp up its facilities in Indonesia, Malaysia, Australia and Vietnam.
In addition to these four locations, Aker Solutions already has a solid presence with additional service bases for surface products located in Singapore, Thailand, India, China, Nigeria and Middle East.
Martinussen says: "We have a solid network of facilities for subsea and surface products in this region. This puts us in a very favourable position when it comes to supporting our customers. Even though we are a company with a global footprint, a key focus is always local presence and support. The expansion of our Batam facility is a testament to the latter".
The Asia Pacific region is expected to be one of the fastest growing markets in the oil and gas industry in the coming years. In anticipation of this, Aker Solutions has over the past three years invested approximately USD 130 million in new facilities and upgrades of existing ones.
The first was the establishment of a state-of-the-art manufacturing centre in Malaysia in 2007. This is the only facility in the world where a complete subsea production system can be manufactured in one location. This was followed by the establishment of a new service and test facility in Perth, Australia, and a new service base in Vietnam, last year.
"The long-term outlook for the subsea industry, as well as surface products, is very good. The investments over the last couple of years mean that we are very well prepared for an upturn in these markets," concludes Martinussen.
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