CALEDUS is teaming up with its Malaysia agent to forge a joint-venture company in a bid to better capitalise on South-east Asia market opportunities.
The Aberdeen firm’s MD, Paul Howlett, told Energy that the JV with Deleum (it trades as Delcom in Malaysia) will require about 25 staff, and that Derren Brown, a Scot from Cruden Bay, has been appointed sales manager. This compares with the current Caledus head count of 33 in Aberdeen and global ambition of 200 by 2012, assuming growth targets are met.
Details of the JV were still being worked out as Energy went to press and expectation is that the company will be launched at the Offshore Technology Conference in Houston this week.
Howlett said taking the joint-venture route would be more efficient than the traditional South-east Asia practice of multiple agents scattered around the various countries in this vast region.
He said: “We think we’ll grow the business a lot faster by not managing multiple agents. Basically, we’re creating a mini-region within Asia-Pacific. The JV will be able to cover Indonesia and Thailand. Also, we want to leverage the fact that Petronas sources in Malaysia for many of its operations.”
Indeed, the link with Petronas is important as Deleum is a spin-out of what is Malaysia’s national oil company and has been an agent of Caledus for the past three years. Asia-Pacific has become very important to the Aberdeen company and currently accounts for about 40% of turnover, which should come in around £14million for the current year.
But as the group grows globally and broadens its well construction offering, Howlett sees Asia-Pacific accounting for about one-third of future business, bearing in mind that all regions are expected to grown considerably, including the US.