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Success stories
EquipSea Pursuing savinvy investments to emerge successfully from market crises
Claudio Evangelista, CCO Vitor Ramos, CEO
How is EquipSea thriving? A Brazilian manufacturer of welded, machined and coated parts and provider of turnkey tested sets, EquipSea has emerged from a difficult early period even stronger than before. Through a focus on quality, continuous client alignment and willingness to invest during hard times, the company has seen its revenues double for three consecutive years. The challenge EquipSea celebrated a successful sixth birthday at the beginning of 2023. And while it is a young company, its relatively short story so far has been fraught with challenges and curveballs. While the organisation was founded in 2017 and enjoyed relatively fruitful beginnings, it was then plunged into incredibly difficult few years with Brazil’s internal oil & gas market facing several major challenges. Between 2018 and 2019, the Petrobras crisis – labelled the biggest corruption scandal in Latin America’s history that saw executives at Brazil’s national oil company accepting bribes in return for inflated contracts – began to explode, causing market activity to grind to a near halt. From 2020 onwards, EquipSea then equally began to experience the worst effects of the pandemic, including raw material shortages and price increases that all fed
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EIC Survive and Thrive
into an increasingly harsh national energy landscape. Undoubtedly, the Petrobras crisis was the main obstacle, but the pandemic prolonged the consequences for the market for a further year and a half. The solution Despite these hardships and its vulnerable position as a new company in the market, EquipSea continued to power on, the business persevering with its strategic growth plan that involved investing in new machinery and the expansion of its shop floor. Although its projects were frozen, EquipSea’s leadership made the major decision not to dismantle its team of 50plus staff, instead pulling together and working tirelessly to put the company in the best possible position to emerge from the crisis stronger than when market conditions began to improve. This decision was made easier by the strong relationships that the company had already cultivated with its industry partners in the short period it had been operating. Indeed, many of the major industry players in Brazil’s oil & gas market reassured EquipSea that they would remain operational in Brazil for decades to come. Further, some even began to provide forecast scenarios for the coming years and queried EquipSea on how it would help to deal with those demands. In fact, this kept Equipsea calm and faithful during an incredibly tricky period, providing the grounds to maintain confidence in the national oil and gas market despite the hardships and historical oscillations. Further, EquipSea’s candid conversations and open-door policy with clients enabled it to adapt its offering to better
2023