Procurement & Warehousing Department

During 2019, GPIC received materials, equipment and services for an approximate value of BD 16 Million to support the maintenance activities and reliability of the plants’ operation. Approximately, 1,329 Purchase Orders for materials/services were issued during the year.

The Warehouse service levels continued to remain at more than 99% throughout the year, indicating the ready availability of materials required by the plants with total value of BD 3.8 Million of stock received. It is a reflection of the close and effective action and coordination with suppliers and contractors, who are located both locally and overseas.

In keeping with the Company’s cost optimisation Strategy for 2019 whilst ensuring the reliability and safety of the Plants, emphasis was given to stronger commercial negotiation with vendors. These efforts resulted in a saving of BD 1,153,452/- which is 8% of total purchases negotiated value. Attempts were also made, in consultation with the end users, to procure only essential spares. The Department has also finalised orders based on competitive offers from EU traders along with authorised local representatives for some OEM spares, which has resulted in another saving of BD 158,610/- (cost saving due to outsourcing from EU traders vis-avis local authorised representatives’ quotes).

In coordination with Maintenance & Procurement & Warehousing Departments all the materials required for the shutdown TA2020 are in progress. The Turnaround will commence in November 2020. The Procurement & Warehousing Department continues follow up with Maintenance and Engineering to ensure all the purchase orders for TA2020 are issued on a timely basis and the materials are available to cater for the TA’s requirements.

As part of process improvement and increase in the effectiveness of the warehousing operations for materials movements and preservation, the Warehousing Section has installed and commissioned a new unit for Automatic Materials Storage. This is the first unit of its kind installed in Kingdom of Bahrain for storing stock items and operates fully automatically based on the requirement. The unit installed has helped in reducing the storage space, eliminating human error, securing the materials and increasing the rate of materials movement.

Implementation of VAT (Value Added Tax) came into effect in Bahrain from 01/01/2019. GPIC has fully completed the SAP configuration and related modifications in ERP system in time to handle the VAT functionalities, and in line with the statutory requirement of the ‘National Bureau for Taxation (NBT)’ to incorporate the VAT into GPIC’s business operations. The Procurement Team took an active & effective part in coordination of implementation through the provision of necessary inputs, testing the system under development to ensure seamless implementation.