Uniquewellube

COMPANY PROFILE

2015

Unique Wellube

www.uniquegroup.com/Unique-Wellube-FZC | T: +971 6 513 0333

Uniquely placed Editorial: Colin Chinery

Part of the dynamic Unique Maritime Group, Unique Wellube’s services are focused on plant and pipeline operability and avoidance of costly unplanned shutdowns. Global reach extends across the Middle East, North America, Africa, and the UK North Sea, and a hugely impressive growth rate looks set to accelerate following a partnership with USbased Mactech Offshore.

Formed 22 years ago with just three employees, the Unique Maritime Group has grown to become one of the world’s leading integrated turnkey subsea and offshore solution providers.

Specialising in offshore and onshore services including the sale and rental of equipment for

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the marine, diving, hydrographic, oceanographic, oil & gas and non-destructive testing sectors, the UAE-headquartered company has also developed an established manufacturing capability for the delivery of customised engineering projects worldwide.

Organic growth and targeted

acquisitions have powered a continuous expansion of Group services and geographical infrastructure to the point where UMG is now employing over 500 people worldwide located across seven global regions including the Middle East, UK, USA, South Africa, Nigeria, India and Singapore.

Unique Wellube All ten of the Group’s companies are well positioned to manage substantial project requirements as well as sales, rental and service support for a fast-growing international customer base.

Among them is Unique Wellube, the UAE-based specialist engineering company acquired as a wholly owned subsidiary two years ago.

SHUTDOWN AVOIDANCE Unique Wellube offers dedicated engineering services and associated products focused on plant and pipeline operability. Costly unplanned shutdowns are spared by allowing intervention and plant critical maintenance work to be carried safely and cost effectively.

Products and services range from hot tapping, line stopping, on-site machining and under pressure leak sealing, to customised firings, testing, maintenance, platform

decommissioning services and portable onsite machining sales and rentals.

Formed ten years ago, Unique Wellube grew rapidly with UMG investment providing a springboard for international expansion. When its founder John Allison retired two years ago, UMG acquired a 100 per cent holding. “Unique has always been an integral part of the Group,” says its Managing Director, Sahil Gandhi.

“With many years of combined experience backed by substantial R&D, our team of professional graduate engineers and highly skilled technicians are providing innovative solutions to meet our customers’ most demanding challenges.”

Hot tapping and line stopping services are currently the most in-demand services. “And over the last couple of years there’s been a

lot of focus on asset integrity and management, pushing the life of lines as far as they can go. There are a lot of pipe lines coming to their scrap date, and clients are looking for solutions to maintain pipe lines and keep them going for as long as possible.

“There are always different challenges of course. No one pipe line is ever carrying the same material or chemical composition, so you must come up with small innovations on almost a daily basis to ensure best performance.”

As part of UMG, Unique Wellube benefits from Group divisional interaction and resource support.

“We are a synergised Group with a widely similar customer base, so we work very closely with our diving and marine departments, not least because they, like us, are dealing with a lot of offshore EPC contractors.”

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and Mactech the engineering and machinery behind it. We are talking to the same clients, and this enables us both to offer a bigger package and take away the headaches and hassle of having to deal with different sub-contractors.”

Sahil Gandhi

Unsurprisingly oil & gas has been identified as a Group major expansion area. “This is where we are going to deliver most of our growth over the next five years,” says Gandhi. “We have already started the expansion process, taking the Oil and Gas Division to India, Nigeria, and the UK. “Three locations in a very short time, and hopefully next year we will be bringing in Singapore and Saudi Arabia. We see the Middle East as a major market for our products and services.”

As well as regional growth, Unique Wellube is looking to bring in complimentary products and services – a strategy that has seen the development of a major partnership with US-based Mactech Offshore, the world’s leading provider of subsea and offshore machining equipment solutions.

“Mactech is a very interactive company working with clients to come up with bespoke solutions.

They are able to react very quickly and provide high quality equipment and engineering services, and this

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ties in very much with our philosophy and operation. As a Group we won’t take lots of partners on, but when we do we like to think of them as our company and vice versa.”

Focussed mainly on cutting services, Mactech is the forefront name in offshore decommissioning diamond wire cutters. Ideal for cutting multi-string applications or heavy wall legs and cross members, its compact and robust design creates an ideal cutting environment, reducing setup, installation and removal time and costs.

And as part of its strategy of continuous innovation, Mactech Offshore has now introduced the revolutionary ROV Diamond Wire Saw. Designed to address economical efficiencies and advantages, it also focuses on personnel and environmental safety when cutting equipment for abandonment operations.

HEADACHE FREE ZONE “All this ties in with the range of services we provide,” says Gandhi. “We provide the services

“We have a very strong engineering team, and this is the base of our company, and as a result we are able to provide solutions our competitors are unable to do” With the oil price crash of 2014 upending the geopolitical chessboard, and Saudi Arabia’s oil minister Ali al-Naimi’s pre-Christmas claim that OPEC will not cut production even if the price falls to $20 a barrel, how does Mr Gandhi assess the challenges facing Unique Wellube?

“We are riding the wave OK at the moment. But a continuous phase of low oil prices will bring a period of slow down in the market, though for service companies like ours I think there will be a time lag before it comes through.

“But there’s still optimism in the market with a lot of the key players saying they will continue with their new and expansion projects,

Unique Wellube

“I think the keys to success in this critical industry are quality, response times, and our flexibility to work around different problems and challenges. We have a very strong engineering team and an unparalleled reputation for customer service and project delivery - this is the base of our company. As a result of this, and new partnerships such as the one with Mactech, we have a very exciting time ahead and will continue to grow Unique Maritime Group to meet our customer and market demands.”

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per cent, and where opportune becoming Greener in our thinking and habits.”

see it growing exponentially. At the moment we are working in a couple of regions, but we are both ambitious companies and as we grow over the next five years you will see the Mactech-Wellube combination in many more places around the world.

“We are exhilarated to enter new markets, and growing fast in regions such as the Middle East, providing our superior range of products and making our clients happy with Unique Wellube’s efficient and cost-effective solutions.

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especially in the Gulf States and Middle East.

“Middle East government oil majors are willing to ride out the dip in prices, but other regions and deeper water locations such as the North Sea and Brazil could suffer, with higher costs and the fact they are not backed by big government majors.”

These concerns aside, the global deep water operational expansion of recent years has seen an increasing demand for rental equipment, with Unique Wellube investing in deeper water assets for its rental pool while simultaneously boosting its design team to ensure the diving and buoyancy divisions can cope with deeper waters.

And with its strong exploration and construction focus, Unique Wellube’s portfolio has clear potential for the renewables sector. “Currently we do not have a technology like this, but we are always looking to develop.

“It’s always about finding the right opportunities, and with a lot of variations across these technologies we are monitoring them very closely to see which are the most efficient, and also the potential partners we might work with. There are many renewable technologies out there but not all are as efficient as others.

“In our own case, right across the board we are always looking at how we can become more efficient in our technology and practices, bettering ourselves by ten to 15

Subsea Cutting Experts Ma c t e c h O f f s h ore p rovid es h un d red s of A merican mad e t ools a n d s e r v i c e s commit t ed t o t h e Of fs h ore S ub s ea mar ket. F rom S p lit F ra m e C u tt e r s t o Diamon d W ire S aw s , w e h ave p os it ion ed ours elves to d e s ig n , d e vel op an d appl y t h es e s p ecializ ed cut t in g t ools t o m a r i n e s e r v i c e s in t h e oil an d gas in d us t ry.

See our equipment for yourself Visit www.mactechoffshore.com P.O. Box 42647, Sharjah, UAE www.uniquegroup.com enquiries@wellube.com +971 6 5130333

3129 Hwy 90 East - Broussard, LA 70518 www.mactechoffshore.com info@mactechoffshore.com +1.337.839.2793

DYNAMIC PARTNERS Clearly, the Mactech partnership is going to be a major force in Unique’s on-going expansion. “I PAGE 5

+44 (0) 1603 411569 info@totalworldenergy.com East Coast Promotions Ltd, 2 Ardney Rise Norwich, Norfolk NR3 3QH

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