Dubai headquartered safety seal manufacturer Roxtec Middle East FZE is reporting its best year of trading in the power industries across the region.
The Jebel Ali Freezone based company has grown its power division by 20 per cent and its headcount to 20 with three new hires in the last year. This comes after the company won a number of high-profile power contracts. This includes supplying Project Lightning, the first subsea cable project in the Middle East. The $3.8billion project provides a high-voltage direct-current (HVDC) transmission system for Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (ADNOC) offshore operations to the onshore power grid in the United Arab Emirates.
The project required Roxtec to design bespoke cable sealing solutions to manage the HVDC switching from AC to DC power between sea and land. The Roxtec seals are designed to provide water ingress and electromagnetic interference protection for four subsea cable seals carrying power of up to 400 kilovolt (Kv) stretching over 100km on the seabed. The project which connects low-carbon power from the mainland grid to ADNOC’s production operations will reduce the carbon footprint of the offshore facilities by up to 30 percent.
Roxtec power and processing manager Ihab Zourob said the company will be showcasing its wide range of cable sealing products at the forthcoming Middle East Energy trade show at Dubai World Trade Center April 7-9.
Mr Zourob said Roxtec is seeing increasing demand for its seals in the clean energy sector in the MENA region including for batteries, solar, green hydrogen, nuclear, windfarms, HVDC projects as well as traditional oil and gas facilities. He pointed to the UAE leading the world in its Energy Strategy 2050 which aims to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. This includes tripling renewable energy capacity and increasing the share of clean energy in the total energy mix to 30% by 2030, and 50% by 2050. Roxtec is again helping with this decarbonization drive working with ADNOC on its first carbon capture project at the Habshan gas plant. Here Roxtec’s multidiameter technology is being used as the cable sealing solution protecting the facility from a range of hazards.
“The last year has been very strong for Roxtec in the power industry,” he said. “The changing nature of energy demand in the UAE and the country’s drive to net zero means more complex sealing solutions are required. Roxtec’s cable seals protect buildings, people and infrastructure from a wide variety of hazards including explosions, fire, electromagnetic interference and flooding. With new sources of clean power emerging in the MENA region the cable sealing has to be extremely robust to manage different types of hazards to maintain the power supply.”
Mr Zourob said the Swedish owned Roxtec Group’s experience of working on power projects all over the world enables it to bring ready solutions to nuclear, windfarm, solar and subsea projects to the MENA region.
“As the Gulf region evolves its power sources engineering companies and power companies want cable sealing projects which are proven to work,” he said. “We have extensive experience of providing seals to wind turbines and substations on every windfarm in Europe for example. We have also worked on nuclear power plants and subsea cables around the world. This enables us to design bespoke solutions for very big projects here in the Persian Gulf.”
Mr Zourob confirmed Roxtec has appointed new Sales Managers in Basra, Iraq and Tunisia to cover North Africa countries in the last 12 months to drive growth and support customers on the ground.
Background
Roxtec was founded in Sweden in 1990. It is now the global leader in the manufacture of innovative cable and pipe transit systems, supplying many of the world’s biggest firms.
It is active in more than 80 markets with a turnover of more than £220million employing over 1000 staff across 30 subsidiaries.
Roxtec’s products are designed to seal cables and pipes, and are used to protect people, buildings and equipment from multiple hazards.