NEW PRODUCTS INCREASE AMOUNT OF ORDERS
The new products launched by TUBACEX over the past years are proving to be essential for the Group’s growing order book, which covers the company’s production until the first quarter of 2012, bringing the amount of orders back to where it was before the financial crisis. The largest amount of orders are for cold-rolled products, which have the highest added value and the best technology.
TUBACEX decided to develop production capacities strategically in those value-added segments requiring a high level of expertise within the oil, gas and power generation industries, and which are expected to grow the most, such as the exploration and extraction of oil and gas in extreme conditions (offshore and deep water extraction) and power generation in state-of-the-art plants. The development of a strategic alliance with Vallourec & Mannesmann is also leading to important orders in the energy and OCTG sectors.
With these orders included in TUBACEX’s order book, the importance of tubes for exploration and extraction of oil and gas and of tubes for power generation has increased significantly in the sales mix.
From 2007 to 2010, the company invested 113.37 million euros – nearly 30 million per financial year – basically connected to the strategic development of the new production capacities.
In this sense, TUBACEX opened new cold-rolling facilities for high-value products in the Amurrio factory, specializing in tubes for exploration and extraction of oil and gas (OCTG, Oil Country Tubular Goods) in special alloys, complemented by the improvement of the finishing area of the TTI factory in Llodio, in which two new ultrasound control machines were added, amongst other elements, to improve product quality assurance.
The company has also started up, in the Group’s factory in Austria, a new plant to manufacture tubes for umbilicals (offshore), a product intended for supporting activities in the exploration and extraction of oil and gas in critical conditions of pressure, temperature and corrosion. The new plant is the international technological benchmark of this type of facilities.
A new hot tube extrusion mill has been installed in the plant in Austria, which will complement the current one, feeding into the cold tube rollers for umbilicals, and producing small-diameter hot rolled tubes in special alloys.
Given the positive demand perspectives for the production of high-alloy oil and gas tubes, TUBACEX’s Board of Directors, following the Group’s Strategic Plan, approved a capital expenditure package of 25 million euros in July, to increase the company’s manufacturing capacity of this type of products in its Llodio and Amurrio facilities.