Face To Face: Alfredo D’Souza from RathGibson

We have established an office in Manama, Bahrain. The Middle East operation fits with our overall global development strategy.

The strategy was simple, get closer to the actual customers who are using our products, and provide real solutions and excellent service in real time, to essentially make it easier for customer to do business with us. Recently, we were awarded the honour of supplying stainless steel heat exchanger tubes for the Jebel Ali ‘M’ power station in the United Arab Emirates.
 
What are your chief upstream offerings?

Our main product lines are precision stainless steel tubes and pipes for the oil and gas and petrochemicals sectors. These are both straight lengths as well as coiled products.

We offer both welded and stainless pipe and tube. Our seamless factories specialty is providing world class tubes in extremely short lead limes, we are often called upon in emergency situations. We have invested heavily in our manufacturing facilities, bringing in high-tech equipment that enables us to explore new ways of doing things and also developing new products that enable us to grow and expand our business.

What has your response to the economic downturn been?

We are proactively and aggressively turning over every stone looking for opportunities to serve existing and new customers. The 4000 MW power plant in Tata Mundra project in India and Jebel Ali ‘M’ power station are testament to the fact that we as an organisation are indeed continuing to be aggressive in the marketplace.
 
Has the economic situation affected global demand?

A number of global factors have impacted our business. First, the price of raw materials, steel and nickel in particular, has come down. Some customers began playing the waiting game of seeing how low it would go before placing orders.  Second, the extreme fluctuation in oil prices was and still is an issue.

As the price soared over $100/barrel, chemical firms were holding off on orders as their raw material costs were extremely high and at the same time, our oil business was naturally expanding. Then oil came down – so land wells and marginal well business started to dry up – but the chemical processing business started to kick in. So, we have positioned ourselves to take advantage of the swings as they occur, and not rely wholly on any particular segment.

Which end user sector brings the most business?

Oil and gas and petrochemicals are likely to be our largest business generators in the region. Although, power generation and in particular, alternate power such as solar and geothermal have shown recent increases.

Are you consolidating or restructuring any business units?

Despite the global situation, we continue to drive towards growth in a responsible manner yet with determined intentions.  In fact, not only have we not laid off anyone in our international group, we have strategically expanded our sales footprint globally to fuel growth in these tough times.

Which countries in the Middle East do you find the most promising?

Honestly speaking, the whole region is promising for different reasons. Saudi Arabia and UAE stand out and offer significant opportunities for the oil and gas sector of our business. Also, they present interesting high tech potential for the rest of our business areas.

What will drive RathGibson’s growth?

My role and primary responsibilities are to grow our business in the Middle East. We have grown in a healthy fashion in the last three years – going from 3% of RathGibson’s global business to close to 25% – and I’m confident that we are we are just getting started in India and the Middle East.

We’ll develop a locally relevant strategy in all the regions we target, hire the right local people to manage and lead the business, and remember that the team on the ground is right 99.5% of the time. If you treat your people with dignity and respect, they in turn will do everything they can to take care of the bottom line.