Kent Stainless Celebrate Largest Order Ever!
16-Apr-2012
2nd Major Contract from The Middle East
Members of the Kent team were delighted to welcome returning Chinese customers back to Wexford on their third visit to Ireland over the Easter Bank Holiday weekend. Minister Brendan Howlin also arrived to greet Mr. David Wei and Mr. Mao Ye from Chinese company Sinohydro. He greatly expressed his support for the venture and was impressed by Kent Stainless’ huge export efforts to date. “Enterprise Ireland’s Waterford office and International Offices have been a great support to us in our efforts to expand overseas and we see this expansion continuing over our next 5 year plan” said Sales & Marketing Director, Shane Curtin.
The visit was a milestone in Kent History as this 5.5 million euro deal marks the company’s largest order ever! It is Kent Stainless’ second order from Chinese company Sinohydro and it comes on the back of another multi-million deal which Kent finished shipping in September of last year.
2011 saw Kent Stainless export 200 tonnes of stainless steel to Lusail City in the Middle East. Lusail, Qatar’s future city which is being built in order for Qatar to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup, is located 15k north of capital city Doha and will eventually accommodate approximately 250, 000 people. The city will feature, marinas, island resorts, Stadiums, Luxury Shopping malls and elaborate Entertainment Districts to name but a few. Major construction is ongoing.
Of the 200 tonnes of stainless steel Kent exported last year about 70% of this was sent by Sea and 30% Air Freighted. This alone was a huge success for Kent Stainless as the Logistics team had never before faced shipping such large quantities on a project. 2012 will now see Kent Stainless ship a further 300 tonnes of stainless steel to the City of the Future-Lusail.
Work on such large projects spelled job creation for the South East last year, and Kent Stainless took on 20 new crew members in 2011, this new deal will now enable them to keep production rates up thus keeping workforce numbers intact!
Although, the factory was closed for the visit, Minister Brendan Howlin and our Chinese clients still enjoyed a factory tour with Pat Kent-Chairman, Ann O’ Brien Managing Director and Shane Curtin, Sales & Marketing Director. As always, a factory tour proves to be our best selling feature, many tend to overlook it as we are located out of direct sight of passing traffic. However, our online video tour is proving successful in communicating exactly who we are and what we are capable of doing. Take a tour!
