A specialist oilfield services company based in rural Angus is set for major growth on the back of a £2 million investment.
RMEC Ltd, which operates from workshops on founder Alan Ramsay’s family farm at Cotton of Pitkennedy, marked 10 years in business yesterday by unveiling ambitious plans to significantly increase the size of its operations.
The company’s core business is the maintenance, pressure testing, recertification, manufacture, supply and rental of well services equipment for the oil and gas industry, and its blue-chip clients include Schlumberger and Baker Hughes.
RMEC yesterday said it would shortly be submitting plans to Angus Council for permissions to more than treble the size of its existing yard from 65,000ft2 to more than 196,000ft2.
The new enlarged RMEC facility would increase available workshop space for engineering operations, and significantly add to storage capacity at the site.
The plans comes just three months after RMEC was bought over in a £14 million deal which saw Glasgow-based Maven Capital inject £7.5m into the business in support of a management buy out (MBO).
Managing director Bryan Fagan, appointed following the MBO in April, said the plan was to invest £2m over the next 18 months into RMEC’s Angus facility and its fleet of well-intervention equipment.
“We are increasingly confident of our growth potential, given our growing reputation for new-build, refurbishment and maintenance of offshore and hydraulic equipment and the overall growth in the North Sea marketplace for these services,” Mr Fagan said.
“As a company we have seen a steady increase in our operations since RMEC Ltd launched in 2004.
“Our intention is to now ramp up activity going forward by increasing our capacity through organic year-on-year growth.
“Part of this spend will see us invest in new equipment to support our diversification into the decommissioning sector, where there is a rising global demand for a project management approach to equipment solutions.”
RMEC employs 22 staff it expects a handful of new employees to boost that number before the end of this year and turned over about £9m in the last financial year. Mr Fagan said the ambition was to increase revenues by 80% to more than £16m over the next five years.
He said the firm was committed to maintaining its base in Angus in the long-term, where he said RMEC had access to a “fantastic” labour pool.
He also said clients had been happy to support the firm in its current location, where overall operating costs were considerably lower than in Aberdeen and its immediate environs.
“Our plan right now is to submit proposals to the council for planning, and what we envisage is the extension of the existing site to be done in the next 12 months,” Mr Fagan said.
“We have got a plan to take us from £9m to £16m by 2019, which is not aggressive.
“It is achievable and it is realistic but we need to take our clients with us and talk to them about what we are going to offer.
“We probably punch above our weight already, but I am pretty confident that we can get from £9m to £16m without overdoing it.”