Krantech makes off-shore splash
Krantech Holdings Limited, the Chesterfield based manufacturer of specialist sub-sea products for the offshore oil and gas industries, is already dealing with products utilised offshore by gas giants BP, Texaco and Shell, after less than a year in business thanks to help from MAS EM.
Krantech makes off-shore splash
The business, started trading in September 2006 and decided to enlist the help of MAS. "Having dealt with them before in a previous company, I was keen to get MAS EM involved to help us gain the ISO9001:2000 accreditation that we needed to secure tenders in this highly specific field," said Paul A Wright, Purchasing and Quality Director at Krantech.
"The rapport we built up with our MAS practitioner Ray McKinnon was essential. He even came out with us on the first day to our premises to have a look around. If we had any problems he was definitely our first point of call. Without him we wouldn't have been able to set up our business effectively in such a short space of time," Paul continued.
Krantech manufactures components of sub sea trees that help to extract oil and gas from the sea bed up to the rig platform. The company manufactures raw materials to a customer design specification given to them by off-shore oil and gas industry service providers, who in turn sell the products to the major gas and oil companies.
To get the business up and running, Krantech needed the ISO 9001:2000 accreditation. To ensure this was obtained without delay, a welding accreditation was initially needed to guarantee the quality of the welding of the fabrications. In October 2006, Ray arranged the advanced training that was needed to gain the welding accreditation, brought in professional consultants for auditing and other specialists to ensure that the management control procedure was clear to all.
"Krantech is a highly specialised business fulfilling a niche market, requiring me to source outside expertise for elements of the project," said Ray. "The successful ISO 9001:2001 and welding accreditations were achieved through associates of MAS EM. It is policy of MAS that if we haven't got the appropriate team in-house we won't invent them but will bring in specialists."
In less than one year the workforce has more than tripled. Furthermore, there has been a first year turnover which exceeds business expectations and the company's product will eventually be deployed to the Finnish North Sea, the Gulf of Mexico, Nigerian West Coast of Africa, Nile Delta and many other places all over the world.
