Sarens Nass Middle East

Lifting your business to new heights

Sarens NV and the Nass Group, the former a Belgian based company and the latter a Bahrain based group of companies, came together in 2002 to establish an organisation in the Middle East.

Sarens Nass Middle East W.L.L. (SNME) is a joint venture based in Bahrain that combines the heavy lift, engineering services & international expertise of Sarens NV with the construction, fabrication, crane services and local exposure of Nass Group. It began with roughly 25 cranes but during the last ten years the fleet has grown to 250 units whilst establishing additional country offices as independent profit centres in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Oman. By fleet and service portfolio, SNME is among the top five crane services and heavy lift solution providers of the Middle East.

“As one of the leading players in the market, we deal with most of the giant industrial houses in the region, including Saudi Aramco & SABIC in Saudi Arabia, BAPCO in Bahrain, Petrol Development Oman (PDO), and Qatar Petroleum (QP).” says general manager, M. Saeed Malik. “Our service value addition is to provide turnkey solutions to our clientele and we have successfully delivered this to our customers including the clients mentioned previously, and EPC’s, construction sub contractor’s from oil and gas, petrochemical, power and water and infrastructure sectors all over the region. We now have a wide portfolio of services and fleet ranging from 25 to 500 ton mobile cranes, and crawler cranes ranging from 50 tons to 500 tons supported by the heavy lift cranes of Sarens Heavy Lift Projects Intl, which range from 600 tons up to 2000 tons based in the region. At this moment the fleet is working on various long term and short crane rental assignments and about 11 heavy lift projects in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, and Oman.

With Saudi Arabia being the largest economy and industrial nation of the region, SNME is working on a joint venture facility construction project between Aramco and several oil majors including Shell. In addition to this SNME is working on a significant contract with Sadara, a joint venture between Saudi Aramco and The Dow Chemical Company, that will see the business participate in the construction of the world’s largest integrated petrochemical complex located in Al Jubail. At 25 billion euros, it is one of the biggest projects the heavy lift company has been involved with.

The Middle East is, at present, going through major industrialisation of its society. Besides this the revenue generated by the region’s oil and gas industry, finances that are generated from the resources are then invested into large-scale social development projects. As one of the leading heavy lift and crane services companies in the area, SNME is benefitting hugely. Its close relationship with oil and gas majors in the region means it gains contracts at the beginning of the chain, whilst its experience in general heavy lift provides it with plenty of opportunities to work in infrastructure development projects as well.

“We have been growing at about ten to 12 per cent per annum and have a plan for the next five years to maintain our growth at the same pace,” Malik states. “The strategy for doing that has two approaches. The first is to increase our fleet base and second is to improve our geographical presence. We began operations in Oman earlier in 2012 and have been awarded our first big contract with a consortium led by Bechtel Corporation for major expansion at the Muscat International Airport in Oman. For this we will be putting up C8800s, a CC2800, and about 20 regular units of cranes and shift equipments ranging in lift strength from 35 to 200 tonnes.

“From all the information that we have, the Middle East will be going through approximately 100 to 200 billion Euros worth of construction per year over the next few years. To capture part of this market, we will be going in two directions. First we will be targeting the 100 to 200 tonne mobile crane market and on the heavy lift side we will be catering to the medium range 600 to 1600 tonne sector. Our fleet already has the cranes to accommodate this but we will also be looking at bringing in new cranes.”

SNME is eager to provide its clients with value added services and it has been crucial in achieving new milestones. Whilst Sarens Group offers the company with crane resources and experience, Nass Group has several industrial manufacturing subsidiaries that SNME can rely on to provide high quality services. Furthermore, SNME will handle forwarding and clearing duties; many Middle East nations have unique import and export requirements that international clients might have trouble navigating. SNME’s familiarity on this topic means clients’ operations are made much more efficient.

Malik looks at where the company will utilise this to develop over the coming years: “SNME has huge funding available to it and plenty of potential projects due to the industrialisation in the Middle East. We believe that this will be the fastest developing market in the world over the next five to ten years and, with the knowhow that the company already possesses, we believe there will be very good opportunities to explore and expand. That is our future business plan.”

Sarens Nass Middle East
Services: Crane services, heavy lift & shift solutions