Greenray
Fast track to success
Since it was founded in 1981, Greenray has developed a proven reputation in offering specialised engineering solutions for maintaining gas turbines and rotating equipment throughout the oil and gas and power generation industries. Over the course of more than three decades the company has grown to offer a complete range of OEM equivalent services and equipment to over 30 countries worldwide. Furthermore through its representative agreements, it maintains a presence in over ten countries globally and is able to deliver a wide range of service solutions with a flexible approach to meet its clients’ unique needs.
During the early years of the company’s history, Greenray was active in North Africa in the supply of water well drilling equipment by providing drilling equipment and land based exploration rigs on behalf of a number of American companies. This gave Greenray valuable experience and commercial expertise in international trade and finance, which would prove to be an important asset when the company took the decision to transition into new areas of business. “Greenray was originally established by individuals who had previously worked for GEC Gas Turbines and having worked in the field before, it wasn’t a huge intellectual step for the business to move into gas turbines,” elaborates Greenray CEO, Iain Lister. “The then owners of the business decided to review the portfolio of services provided by the company and soon after founded its relationship with what was European Gas Turbines. The concept of the business was to carry out service work primarily on gas turbines, this included niche services that OEMs found difficult to carry out themselves.”
Today Greenray operates as an Advanced Partner to Siemens and in November 2006 the company entered into an exclusive agreement with Greenray to provide customers that own industrial gas turbines originally manufactured and supplied by GEC Gas Turbines Ltd, with spare parts, technical services, field service, workshop overhauls, control system retrofits and
technical support directly and in the name of Greenray to all owners of these machines worldwide. Greenray currently supports over 375 active machines globally and many of Greenray’s key personnel are past employees of GEC Gas Turbines and were involved in the design and supply of the original GEC Gas Turbine equipment.
Later during 2007 Greenray reached a further important milestone when Iain joined the company as Managing Director of the Energy Division, a position he held until 2012 when Iain acquired the business and became the Greenray Chief Executive. “Prior to joining the business, I had previously worked for Alstom as one of its company directors in the UK. When I joined Greenray it was a relatively small business with around 19 employees and a turnover of £7 million. It was always the premise that I would eventually buy the company and when I eventually did acquire Greenray through a management buyout, we identified a number of opportunities to move the business forward. One of these was in the provision of control systems and the other, which is rapidly becoming a very successful part of the business is in complete gas turbine package rehabilitations.”
Today Greenray operates with a turnover fast approaching £32 million, with a network of facilities in Lincoln and Aberdeen within the UK, as well as Abu Dhabi, UAE. Furthermore the company maintains close links to representatives operating within Asia and the Middle East, proving support to its customers’ needs. Its portfolio includes a comprehensive suite of upgrade and retrofit; workshop overhaul; on site maintenance; spares, support and management; and component repair services. Within its projects division, Greenray provides revamp and overhaul services to gas turbine packages, this includes: control systems, filtration systems, ventilation, lubricating oil, and fuel systems as well as supporting the driven units and exhaust systems. “We have developed Greenray as a holistic one-stop-shop of gas turbine package solutions and the strategy has developed very well,” Iain says. “We have been highly successful and to date have won two major projects, one of which is currently being completed for Oil andNatural Gas Corporation Limited (ONGC) in India, while the other was signed this year for Shell UK operating offshore North Sea.”
The company’s operations for ONGC in India were comprised of refurbishment work of its three gas turbine packages on the Water Injection North (WIN) Platform at Mumbai High Field. The contract was valued at some $30 million and following its completion, guarantees a further 20 years of operation of turbine equipment. The contract was awarded during 2013, with site works commenced during 2015 and projected to continue through 2016. Greenray represents the project’s principle contractor revamping the complete gas turbine package including the power turbine, acoustic enclosures, ventilation systems, fuel systems and Lube oil cooling systems. The work is currently being carried out on the units whilst maintaining operation of at least one Gas Turbine Generator to facilitate continued platform operations.
The recently signed contract between Greenray and its client, Shell UK further underscores the company’s ability to deliver niche and technically challenging services to some of the oil and gas industry’s most widely recognised blue chip organisations. The project itself will focus on works on a North Sea Platform. “The contract is first of all, a major milestone for us, we have done similar in India and to do it for another blue chip company is quite prestigious. We competed with a highly regarded OEM for the contract, and to win against this service provider was good for the business internally and we have demonstrated that we have the internal processes, capability and the engineering strengths to be able to deal with what is a very heavy engineering related project,” Iain says.
With an increasing scope of services within its niche service offering and the award of several prestigious, high profile projects,Greenray represents a growing force within the international oil and gas market. This was further highlighted during 2015 when the company was listed at number 41 in the Sunday Times HSBC International Track 200. “This wasa real achievement that really reflects how our international experience has given us an edge,” Iain concludes. “We also have very highly skilled people across the business and I am very proud to be part of the team. Greenray can provide engineered solutions and I think that is a key part of our business moving forward, not just in gas turbines but in steam turbines androtating equipment.”
Greenray
Services: OEM services and equipment
Issue 125 October 2015