AN INSIDE LOOK: SEA ORGA - REMCO VONK Orga started over 40 years ago as an electrical service and maintenance company working on North Sea Offshore oil and gas platforms. While inspecting and servicing installed marine lanterns, foghorns, aviation obstruction lights, DC power systems and explosion proof electrical equipment, the company developed ideas and innovative products to improve the reliability of these systems, contributing towards enhanced safety and reducing operating expenses. After a period of more than 10 years of product development, Orga began to manufacture its own range of products in 1985. Amongst the first clients to install Orga systems were NAM (Shell / Esso) in The Netherlands, and Shell operating companies in the United Kingdom and Malaysia. Their example was soon followed by most of the major oil and engineering companies. Remco Vonk, Orga’s Business Manager Asia & Pacific, leads the Kuala Lumpur office, which is the main office for the Asian market and is the only office located outside of The Netherlands. The office has a team of 14 employees, mainly focused on Sales and Service. MDBC: Could you tell us what made Orga choose Malaysia as the location of its Asia
& Pacific office? RV: Orga has been based in Malaysia for many years already. Over the last 7 years, we started to focus more actively on the Asian market and the role of the Kuala Lumpur office. As a company, we realized that Malaysia is an interesting location as it is very centralized (all customers in South East Asia are within a relatively short travel distance), and it is easy to find good sales and service people who can communicate in several languages and understand different Asian cultures. For our business, communication is important. This ability to communicate easily and effectively with locals has led to an increase of customers; we managed to increase the turnover by 5 times over the last couple of years. The office used to have a head count of 4 people. By increasing the staff to be able to give our customers more support and by giving our employees more responsibilities, we managed to make our staff more engaged with the company and our results went up. These days, the turnover brought in by Asia plays a significant role in the total turnover of Orga. MDBC: Helping to provide for the safety of your customers is obviously a core part of the business for Orga. With the wide variety of regulations, safety and quality standards, how has this affected Orga?
RV: Explosion safety is the keyword for the products Orga supplies to the offshore, petrochemical and wind industry worldwide. Thanks to the successful introduction of new products in collaboration with regulatory bodies and customers in the last 10 to 15 years, Orga’s business can also be described as explosive; a revenue growth from 10 to almost 50 million euro’s with a growth in employees from 60 to 170 employees located in offices in The Netherlands, Malaysia, UK and Abu Dhabi. Today Orga is leading in the development and manufacturing of smart obstruction lighting, helideck lighting, navigational aids and remote power supply systems. It exports 85% of its sales to mainly Europe, the Middle East and Southeast Asia, where it has a sizable settlement. Recently, North America is also on the radar, thanks to the harmonization of international regulations for explosion protection in a new IEC standard for products in the oil & gas industry. MDBC: How do you balance the demand for innovative, efficient and cost effective products with regulatory compliance? RV: With increasing demands for the latest technology, improved safety and reduced total cost of ownership, Orga’s continuing drive for innovation has developed the very latest in cutting-edge helideck lighting, marine aids to navigation and remote power supply systems. For example, the CAP437 guidance of the UK CAA indicates the changes of the helideck light systems, including helideck status light systems, touchdown / positioning marking circle and heliport identification marking. These changes will have an impact on the industries current perimeter lights, floodlights and helideck status light. Orga can supply a system in full compliance with the new CAP437 requirements. In Asia, we see many yards building rigs, platforms, FPSOs and other vessels which needs to be active in the North Sea / UK waters. In the meantime, we can see many other countries following the UK CAA CAP437. Even here in Malaysia, Petronas has installed our system on their platforms. Therefore the demand for Circle-H systems (Stage 2 lighting) has become tremendous. At this moment, the market for UK CAA CAP437 lights is larger in Asia than in Europe.
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MDBCONNECTS 4TH ISSUE 2015