“The time window with Dublin was too difficult,” says Eyre Tarrant, the food and beverage director at international specialist design and management company PM Group. “Effectively we had a three-day overlap of five hours. That meant that out of a 40-hour week we had just a 15-hour overlap. That was not sustainable. When you are doing a big package of work, you can get away with it, because you don’t need the daily input. But for day-to-day operations it creates big problems.”

Therefore 18 months ago PM Group decided that running their Saudi operations out of Dublin was too difficult and meant that neither it nor its clients were getting full value. So it established a local presence and opened an office in Riyadh.

The policy change appears to be paying dividends. Specializing in the Kingdom in food processing plants, (though internationally it also works on beverage and pharmaceutical manufacturing), PM Group has been closely involved with the Almarai Group, first on its baby milk plant and now on its new chicken processing facility, which will handle 25,000 birds an hour.

“We deal with blue-chip companies all around the world and Almarai is absolutely fascinating,” says Tarrant, “They are the largest integrated dairy in the world. They are the biggest food producer in the Middle East. They are incredibly diverse in what they do.

“They produce dairy products, nutritional products and bakery and now they are into poultry, because they have identified the fact that the whole chicken protein business is absolutely huge.  It is growing exponentially across Saudi Arabia. Everybody wants high-quality protein.

“ Every single item that Almarai makes is 110 percent in terms of quality and in terms of standards of production” asserts Tarrant,  “They put a lot of the science behind their R&D and behind their technology. They pick Rolls-Royce equipment. They have incredibly efficient and streamlined production methodologies. They have outstanding measurement and control systems and are Best in Class on a global basis.”

Given the government’s drive toward food self-sufficiency, Tarrant sees considerable opportunities in food and beverage production. In Jeddah, PM Group has been working on a Mars confectionary plant and also the $60 million project from Halwani Bros to build a diverse food manufacturing facility.

Though PM Group originally set up without a local partner, it has now joined up with local developer Al Akaria. Explains Tarrant: “They do local engineering and we do the high-end international IT bit, the process design, the high-end mechanical design and the project management. If you can combine both with the right team spirit, then you have a very good formula to present to the client.”

The cooperation with Al Akaria worked well on the Halwani job, says Tarrant. “We now intend to drive that model across all our projects in the region. Because there is no doubt about it, there is no point going into a market, being greedy and trying to take all the work. If you get the balance right, it’s good for everybody — it’s good for the client — it’s good for the project.”

PM Group has a four-man team in the Irish trade delegation. By contrast Jones Engineering Group, the mechanical engineers and contractors, have sent no one from Dublin for the trip. This is because they already have two group directors and the group marketing manager based in Saudi Arabia. In the last 18 months the company has invested in excess of $1 million establishing a team of 40 expatriates here.

John King, the group financial director tells Arab News, that this specialist Mechanical, Electrical and Plumbing (MEP) business chose the Kingdom to make such a heavy investment, because it recognized the huge opportunities in its core competencies of food health care and education. Jones Engineering is also working on both the Almarai baby food and chicken plants.

The company originally set out to work independently in the Kingdom. However King says that it was recognized very early on that there were advantages in having a local partner. That materialized in a joint venture with Kabbani Construction Group. “They already have quite a big construction company but they have looked at our expertise and they have decided it’s a win-win for both of us. Our plan is to grow our MEP and fire protection business.”

The company has also seconded experienced personnel to other construction companies.

“One learning curve we have had, ” says King, “is getting to know the right subcontractors in the market. Clearly you cannot just transfer your overheads across to Saudi Arabia, so there is a lot more fabrication locally. Some high technology items such as sprinklers and air handling and other specialist products we may continue to make in Ireland. But for the bulkier stuff we are looking to source in the Kingdom. And by and large we cannot complain with the quality of the Saudi fabricators.

“However, we do an awful lot of due diligence before we place orders. We expect to get it right first time and so do our clients like Almarai. But you have to do your homework and manage subcontractors very tightly. I think it also helped us that the people we eventually worked with could see that we were in Saudi Arabia for the long-term and that we had Almarai as a customer. They could see the potential for their business by getting it right with us.”

Another member of the Irish trade delegation is the remote control and monitoring company DATAC, whose systems help run Hong Kong’s water supply and the power grids in the Philippines and Mexico City. DATAC’s rugged and reliable devices are widely used in the oil industry for fiscal accounting, (monitoring oil and gas transfers between owners).

CEO Cyril Kerr explains to Arab News that his company’s primary focus in the Kingdom is on water, oil and gas and electricity and asset management. This last includes not only control and monitoring of items such as diesel generators, but also comprises integrated GPS devices and accelerometers. “ So if you see a diesel generator traveling at 60 kph, you know its been stolen and is on a flat bed somewhere”.

DATAC is in the early stages of its relationship with the Kingdom.

“ During the trade delegation visit, we have many meetings set up with the different utilities,” says Kerr, “We also have two heavily technical sessions scheduled. This means that  we have already made the impression and now our potential customers want to see the whites of our eyes and check if what we are offering is all true.”

It seems likely that DATAC will end up going with at least one local partner. “At this stage we are simply getting to be known in our own right to our potential customers. Later on we have to take the decision, who do we partner with and who do we go through. These are important choices, because the business that can do an electricity plant, isn’t necessarily the right one to do a water treatment plant.

“Ours is a very technical sell. To close the deal you have to have someone who is highly technical and once a deal is made you are going to have to provide after-sales support. Our model has been to set up local companies in markets where the business is big enough to justify it.”

Kerr clearly has high hopes for DATACs offering. “We have the technology, the expertise and the proven record for addressing the issues that the Kingdom has on water production and distribution. In terms of electricity, we have a proven record in sub-station automation, electricity distribution and control centers. 

“In oil and gas we have some very very modern data analysis and reporting software that can take the gigabytes of previously unmanageable data and produce useful and meaningful information, such as the actual cost of producing from a particular well.”

A characteristic of all the Irish companies currently visiting us is that none has the capacity to take on projects worth hundreds of millions of dollars. DATAC with its control and monitoring devices is for instance in direct competition with the likes of GE, Siemens and ABB. Therefore to prosper, Irish firms have focused on niche markets, where their expertise, service levels and product quality, can allow them to win overseas business.