ALDERLEY: Advanced Solutions to Meet Global Energy Challenges

“Alderley is the perfect example of a high-quality, progressive engineering business with great people, a fantastic heritage, excellent products and services,” begins CEO, Colin Elcoate. “There is a real sense of pride and commitment to delivering customer value.” Alderley has the expertise and experience to deliver every time, on everything from measurement technology and pressure testing through to software and digital services.

Long known for technical excellence with family values at its core, founder Tony Shepherd brought together in 1989 the multiple diverse companies and many years of experience that now comprise Alderley. “Engineering skill and technical excellence are what set us apart,” the late founder maintained. “This continues to underpin our strength of offering and company growth.”

Identifying and expertly integrating the latest technologies to meet clients’ differing project requirements, Alderley harnesses the expertise of local, flexible and agile teams to provide the best support and in-country value, backed by a global team of experts.

GLOBAL GROWTH

“We are a family business,” Elcoate says, “and we are owned by the Shepherd family, based in the UK, with the family active on the board. That gives us a lot of flexibility in terms of how quickly we can get things approved. When people approach us with opportunities we can assess them rapidly and make decisions on whether we will pursue them.”

It also lends Alderley, he goes on, a founding principle still central to its whole ethos and success. “It was Tony Shepherd that not only had the vision for Alderley to become a fantastic engineering company, which made good equipment and had a great reputation, but insisted that we needed to be local and close to our customers.

“That is why we were the first in Dubai, and in Saudi Arabia, to do what we do, based on classic British entrepreneurialism. Nothing has changed in that original vision. We are intent on taking on some of the world’s hardest challenges in the energy space. The business is well-established, with a long history, and we realised that we could expand across the world very fast, with supportive shareholders who are now pushing us to do even more.

“We now just have one global team are proud to be a British-based engineering business that has grown globally.”

Together with a highly-skilled engineering team, Alderley works alongside Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) to come up with creative solutions for some of the biggest energy challenges around the world. As a solutions-based company with more than 60 years of solving diverse customer challenges concerning onshore, offshore and on FPSOs, Elcoate conveys how sometimes turmoil in the market is actually very beneficial for business.

“We are a company that relishes a new challenge,” he says. “When things are changing, and people are looking for new ways of doing business, we tend to bring that Great British spirit of innovation into traditional markets.”

CHANGE AND CHALLENGE

Post-Covid the whole energy market has turned upside down but, crucially, ended up growing. “Operationally, we have a huge variety going on, but with a major focus on the Middle East, where the big players are seriously looking to cement their dominance and flex their muscles even more, in some cases globally,” explains Elcoate.

“We will look to capitalise on these ambitions of theirs, which encompass everything from massive oil and gas upgrade projects to new projects delayed by Covid, while we want to be an early-mover in markets like Saudi Arabia as well. We are hugely excited to say that we operate in these locations, in what are some of the most fertile areas in the world.

“All we can see at present are huge projects, in every region in the world, and scope to deploy our skills and our historic capability and capacity, as well as our newer solutions. We are firm believers that in order to access the best talent, and to service customers properly, we have to be where they are, and we do this across the globe.

“For me it is all about client intimacy, understanding exactly what they want and providing the right quality, technology and price, but crucially building it in the region,” he adds.

Along the way, Alderley has been able to draw on external industry expertise to help address some of its most pressing challenges. “For a family-owned business like Alderley, relationships matter, and I am a huge believer in partnerships,” Elcoate elaborates. “We only enter into them with like-minded companies offering mutual benefits, which could be geographical, in terms of access to markets, or complimentary technology and mutual respect as businesses set on growing together.”

One of the most notable recent collaborations has been with Flowserve, manufacturer and servicer of fluid motion control solutions for the world’s toughest, most critical applications. “It still floors me that someone like Flowserve, the biggest pump company in the world, comes to Alderley and asks us to help out in Saudi Arabia,” Elcoate beams. “There is a real synergy between us as companies, both striving to make the world better for everyone, in their case by creating extraordinary flow control solutions.”

In the Middle East, and across Europe, Alderley has also launched a strategic tie-up with Brodie International as an approved service provider. “Alderley will act as a one-stop-shop for servicing Brodie’s equipment across the Middle East,” Elcoate furthers, of another ideal alignment for all concerned. “Brodie has a large installed base across the Gulf especially in Saudi Arabia, matching Alderley’s operations across the region and our regional HQ in Dammam.”

A WELL-ROUNDED OFFERING

Traditionally, Elcoate details, Alderley has been tasked with supporting all of the foremost energy companies – he names Saudi Aramco, ADNOC, Qatar Energy as illustrative of this – right across their whole portfolios. “Everything from our traditional petrochemical oil and gas business that everybody knows Alderley for, but also an ever-growing breadth of solutions, particularly around our service business,” he adds. “This is providing us with a large tranche of our current work, and of course now we start to see opportunities arise in the renewables and low-carbon space.”

Alderley’s specialism in integrated solutions means that two areas immediately stand out as especially lucrative. “People are already coming to us based on our prior work in hydrogen and carbon capture,” Elcoate effuses. “Everyone is talking about the hydrogen economy, and it presents all sports of applications relevant to us – above all measurement, Alderley’s real specialism. Historically we have built hydrogen refuelling stations, and right now we are working in Saudi Arabia on a large-scale hydrogen plant.

“With the Saudi Vision 2030 and being in-country, well-respected with a petrochemical heritage and experience and able to harness strong client relationships, we are extremely well-positioned to embed ourselves in the green marketplace and grow with it. It is hugely valuable for our portfolio and for our image as a full-blown energy company, and of course for attracting young, talented engineers who want to be involved in the transition.

“What is interesting is to see the business continue to be the best it can be in the current and future marketplace, maximising new technologies and new ways of working,” Elcoate summarises, and a further shift he pinpoints is away from capital-intensive projects to a much more balanced portfolio, prioritising digitisation and digital software.

“We have always had a successful software business,” he details, “creating solutions for very niche engineering applications. This transformation gathered pace during Covid, and we accelerated our interests, investment and developments to match. We are uplifting our aftermarket service business, digital proposition and consultancy business, and trying to reach a more even split.”

Elcoate himself sums it up best, describing Alderley as an energy company with something to offer to all verticals in the market, from power generation, through oil and gas, and now into low-carbon. “We want to be an integral part of these other renewable technologies alongside a lot of our clients who are already servicing this marketplace.

“Growing, diversifying and strengthening the business is so pivotal for us. We will stick to what we know, and there are still so many great problems for us to solve. Alderley has barely even scratched the surface so far, and we have many decades ahead of us in this business of providing high value-added engineering solutions right across the energy space.”