AME International: Premier Steel Fabrication & CNC Machining for Oil & Gas

Piping hot

Founded in August 1996, Automated Machinery & Equipment (AME) is a steel engineering company based in Singapore that serves the shipbuilding, oil and gas, power generation, construction, technology, and pharmaceutical industries.

Following a decade of growing and successful business it was privatised as Automated Machinery & Equipment PTE Ltd in April 2006 then further incorporated with additional capital in September 2007 as AME International. This helped further its ongoing expansion of capabilities and product range, positioning it at the forefront of the Singaporean market, and resulting in the acquisition of a new factory in 2008.

Company managing director, Mr.Steven Toy, talks in greater depth about what AME International offers: “We provide steel fabrication and CNC machining services to our clients and can be considered a turnkey solution provider to major oil tools and equipment makers, as our services range from procurement of materials, fabrication, non-destructive testing (NDT), secondary finishing and all the way to delivery. AME International is one of the few companies in the industry with more than 15 CNC machines that are capable of processing large oil and gas parts.”

AME International has been a steel structure fabricator since it began in 1996. At its large workshop it designs and creates large-scale structures for offshore sectors in all varieties of steel, including stainless steel. The company’s workshop is able to apply its expertise to the precision manufacture of cabinets, chassis, enclosures, frames, mechanical components, panels, sculptures, tanks, weldments and many other parts. Piping fabrication is of course a crucial service AME International provides to the oil and gas industry, applying the skills displayed in its structural fabrication to pipes of all descriptions including carbon steel, duplex materials, and stainless steel 304, 316 and 316L.

Crucial to all of these capabilities is high quality welding and this is something in which AME International is able to boast excellent credentials. Its services include a range of welding processes such as shield metal arc welding (SMAW), electrode welding, flux-cored arc welding (FCAW) or metal inert gas (MIG) welding, gas tungsten arc welding (GTAW) or tungsten inert gas (TIG) welding, resistance spot welding, and many others. The company possesses welders capable of all varieties of welding from relatively simple 2G all the way up to difficult 6G positions.

“Our clients are large players in the oil and gas sector such as GE Vetco Gray and Cooper Cameron,” says Steven about the companies that make use of AME International’s service. “They produce a range of oil tools and equipment for upstream extraction of oil or transport of oil through pipelines from an oil well. We have maintained a very close relationship with our clients, as we are their full turnkey supplier. Training and seminars are held regularly with them to allow our engineers to interact with the client’s engineers and in the process learn from each other. We also help in the development of fixtures for complicated parts, and these technologies are shared with our client. In return they will also share with us their methods and process flows. This is all done in the name of achieving higher levels of efficiency and productivity, and is beneficial to both parties.”

Over the last two years AME International has experienced a great deal of work, with orders and their volumes better than in the years preceding. It expects these figures to hold out until the middle of 2013 at least and this gives the company an opportunity to once again strengthen its capabilities. As such it has just invested more than 15 million SGD to expand its facilities with further CNC machines, meaning it will be able to turn more units around and more quickly. Additionally it has also set up a subsidiary, AME Manufacturing SDN BHD, with a 60,000 square foot workshop in Malaysia. This type of investment is undertaken regularly as it is essential to maintain the company’s position at the forefront of the market.

Looking forward, AME International is in a good position to capitalise on potential opportunities. “Looking at the current order book and forecast for the oil and gas industry I would say the future is very bright for the next one to two years,” agrees Steven “We are currently looking to expand our business into the maintenance and reconditioning of oil equipment and vessels for either berth or offshore vessels. We feel that, with the exponential growth in the number of upstream-related vessels and rigs coming into service each year, the need for maintenance and reconditioning will also increase.”

With prospects aplenty in the pipeline, Steven is confident in the future of AME International: “I believe our business volume would see an increase by up to 200 per cent in the next three years. This was already anticipated more than a year ago so we have already made plans to prepare ourselves. We aim to achieve annual revenue of more than 100 million SGD over the next five years, which would bring us up to initial public offering (IPO) level. Management will then be able to access the business and markets and decide whether we will finally go for an IPO locally.”

AME International
Services: Steel, pipe fabrication, machining