Roxtec power and processing manager Ihab ZourobRoxtec Middle East FZE, the Dubai-headquartered safety seal manufacturer, 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% and its headcount to 20 with three new recruits joining in the last year including new sales managers in Basra, Iraq and Tunisia.
This comes after the company won a number of high-profile power contracts, including supplying Project Lightning, the first subsea cable project in the Middle East. The $3.8 billion 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 (UAE).
The project required Roxtec to design bespoke cable sealing solutions to manage the HVDC switching from AC to DC power between sea and land. Roxtec power and processing manager Ihab Zourob said the company recently showcased its wide range of cable sealing products at
Middle East Energy trade show which took place at the Dubai World Trade Centre (7-9 April).
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 continued: “The last year has been very strong for Roxtec in the power industry. 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, wind farm, solar and subsea projects to the MENA region.
He concluded: “As the Gulf region evolves its power sources, engineering companies and power companies want cable sealing projects which are proven to work. We have extensive experience of providing seals to wind turbines and substations on every wind farm 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 large projects here in the Persian Gulf.”