KUALA LUMPUR: TH Heavy Engineering Bhd plans to go international this year to ensure it remains profitable following continued challenges in the oil and gas industry due to lower oil prices.
Chief executive officer Nusral Danir said the Main Market-listed company was in discussions with several parties on potential offshore fabrication projects in Myanmar, Thailand and India.
“We are hopeful of getting good news this year,” he told a press conference after its AGM in Kuala Lumpur on Monday.
According to Nusral, the company also plans to look for non-oil and gas projects as another way to improve its revenue.
He said with oil prices trading at US$48 per barrel, the oil majors had been unable to award contracts and were deferring projects.
“We used to have a total tender book of RM2.4bil but after the deferment, it only left us with some RM1.7bil worth of projects.
“These projects, which were bid since last year, were mainly offshore fabrication projects and they were all secured locally,” he said.
He also said that TH Heavy Engineering had submitted several bids for the Rapid projects in Pengerang and it had been approached by a third party to use its yard in Pulau Indah to fabricate ships.
Asked on how all the secured projects will be funded, especially when the banks are being more prudent with oil and gas companies, Nusral said if the company won strong projects, the banks would be confident about giving assistance.
“However, winning the projects is tough,” he said, adding that currently TH Heavy Engineering had an orderbook of about RM125mil, which comprises the remaining works of the Kinabalu Offshore projects.
The company would also resize its workforce, depending on the number of projects secured, he said.
“We are not retrenching our people, but we need to make sure our overheads are proportionate with the orderbook. Currently we have about 294 staff mainly working in the yard on a contract basis,”he added.
At 5pm, TH Heavy Engineering’s shares were flat at 12.5 sen with 3.372 million shares traded. - Bernama
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