Oil Review Magazine – interview with Tamer Salama
Oil Review Magazine did an interview with Tamer Salama (MESC looks beyond oil and gas, forays into renewable energy industry)
Mr. Tamer Salama, vice-president for sales and marketing, also talked about the reorganization of MESC’s structure for better business efficiency.
Speaking with Oil Review Middle East, Mr. Salama said that the company has been supplying instrumentation cables globally for 25 years to the oil and gas sector, with more than 35,000 types, thus also customizing to suit the clients’ requirements. “Our strong R&D department also ensures that we constantly innovate on cabling solutions, and now we are looking to cater to sectors beyond oil and gas.”
Elaborating on this, he added that the company manufactures cables for the transportation sector as well as nuclear and renewables industries. “We have seen a dynamic economic change in the Saudi Arabian market over the past two years. Until the end of 2016, it was still heavily dependent on the oil and gas. Now with Vision 2030 in place, the market dependency is diversifying from oil and gas. Saudi Arabia’s oil and gas market is starting to become saturated, but other sectors like renewable energy, transportation and manufacturing are developing much faster.
So, we are adapting our portfolio to address such segments as solar and nuclear.” Mr. Salama pointed out that the cables for nuclear projects are mainly instrumentation and control cables but a very specific requirement from clients is to address radiation issues.
MESC is doing advanced R&D on producing such cables so that they can be a part of a nuclear power plant in Saudi Arabia, he noted. Transportation is another sector that MESC is involved in a big way in Saudi Arabia, being part of all major projects like Harman High Speed Rail and Riyadh Metro for signaling cables. “We are already manufacturing such cables, and have global certifications from VDE Germany, which can be sold anywhere worldwide.”
Besides working on all major Saudi Aramco projects, the company has recently secured a supply contract with the Kuwait National Petroleum Company’s (KNPC) new refinery for instrumentation and control cables for the main processing unit.
Even as the company continues to procure contracts, the Middle East’s economic downturn has had a major impact on the business of MESC. And Mr. Salaam’s first job after his appointment as a V-P in October 2015 was to restructure the sales and marketing organization, to be “customer centric”, and better serve MESC customers. “I have created a new sales support organization, which handles all after sales-related issues so that our sales team can focus more on the customers. We also have an R&D center in Saudi Arabia with an extended support team in Ras Al Khaimah, UAE.” Mr. Salama reiterated that MESC’s strategy will continue to focus on oil and gas, while expanding its cabling business for other industries, and further geographies beyond the MENA region.