Tenaris has recently consolidated its presence in Egypt and is continuing to grow throughout North Africa. Hesham Reda, Area Manager for this region, has been a protagonist in this endeavor, opening the commercial office in Cairo in 2003 and leading a team that has developed unique services for customers in the area.
How did the need arise for the office in Egypt and later the yard?
It was due to the increasing level of activity and the region’s potential. We started out with just a small office in May 2003. Then we hired a secretary and an engineer and got to work. We have been growing ever since and today we have around twenty employees.
Our biggest expansion came in 2006 when we reached an agreement with one of our major customers to create a pipe management program – something that would require Tenaris to build its own yard in Alexandria. The market development in North Africa benefits the expansion of Tenaris in the area. Thanks to ongoing growth, we are now considering the idea of establishing offices in Libya and Algeria as well.
Are many companies interested in Tenaris’s pipe management services?
We know of other companies that are interested in joining the pipe management services. Before our program, nobody had applied this idea before; it was a brand new initiative.
We are also thinking of expanding by providing extra services here in the region. In our Egypt office, we have the largest contract for Tenaris running assistance, and are looking into increasing the number of engineers to respond to customer demands throughout the whole area.
What type of tubular solutions do customers operating in the region need?
We are placing a special focus on sophisticated products such as premium connections and materials for highly demanding situations. This is a market in which we are further ahead. Algeria is a good example since, for us, it used to be a kind of black box. In 2003, we had very limited sales activities there – now we are exceeding 30% of the marketshare, and at the moment, our threads are being qualified. Our TenarisBlue® connections have peaked customers’ interest in a very short period of time.
How does Tenaris respond to the North Africa’s specific characteristics?
Both Libya and Algeria are big markets that are expanding dramatically. We are working hard to find solutions to the difficulties involving logistics, which are complicated in this part of the world. Another specific characteristic is the number of operators we have in these countries: we have around 100 clients in the region. So the number of customers we have is quite large and they have different levels of activity. We are paying close attention to each one so that we can work together. For example, last year we closed a budget of around 200,000 tons – but the largest order was around 10,000 tons. The majority of the orders do not exceed 2,000 or 3,000 tons. Considering these two characteristics, a strong local presence is fundamental.
