Fast-growing Aberdeen oil service company qedi said yesterday it had reached a major milestone since setting up in Kazakhstan in 2004.
The firm has now grown annual turnover in the country to £10million and is on track to increase this by 75% in the next 12 months, bringing the total number of jobs to 300 – of which more than 175 will be expats.
The growth has been underpinned by a contract on the Kashagan early oil project worth around £19million.
Under this deal, qedi provides specialist engineering resources and its GoTechnology software.
Martyn Canham, the firm’s managing director in Kazakhstan, said: “We identified early in 2006 the challenges surrounding resourcing in Kazakhstan in terms of stringent local content and compliance requirements.
“We very quickly realised that if we were to offer tangible, practical services we could address these challenges much more effectively. Last year we had a team of 35 completion engineers in London and they transferred to Kazakhstan.
“From there, we continued to build on our national resources and developed qedi to have three business streams – integrated resourcing solutions for both national and foreign professionals, our completions and commissioning capabilities including GoTechnology, and small package engineering services.”
Qedi invested £3.25million in setting up a training school with local partner Caspian Technical Resources.
The school has already trained 500 Kazakh nationals and qedi is responsible for placing 200 of these in jobs.
Mr Canham said: “The training school was the foundation for building solid relationships and gaining the market intelligence and brand recognition we needed to develop business in Kazakhstan. It enabled us to offer a seamless approach to complying with local content issues, looking after the welfare of expats and providing skilled nationals to these major projects.”