Friday, 22 October 2010

FT.com - Kef Holdings ready for recovery in Sharjah

Sharjah, one of the seven mini-states of the United Arab Emirates, has little oil to speak of itself, but Kef Holdings, based in the emirate’s Hamriyah industrial zone, plays an important part in the Gulf’s hydrocarbon industry.

Kef Holdings started out in 1995 as Emirates Techno Casting, a scrap-metal dealing business, but its industrial foundries now produce pure-steel juggernaut valves, which can weigh up to 45 tons, for the regional oil and gas sector. These valves can cope with the high pressures under the Earth’s surface, and typically make up 8-12 per cent of an energy project’s total costs.

The annual global valve industry is worth roughly $18.5bn, according to estimates by Kef Holdings. For much of the past decade, it was a good business niche in the Gulf. Soaring energy prices spurred vast investments in oil and gas projects as governments tried to build capacity.

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