Bahrain Aluminium Extrusion Company (Balexco), a leading aluminium extrusion company based in Bahrain, is bracing for capacity expansion, plant refurbishments and new launches under a new business plan called `Balexco 2020’, that incorporates its growth forecast plan over the next three years.

The initiative has been prompted by the company’s modest growth in output and revenues achieved in 2017 after seeing a challenging 2016.

“The year 2017 has been much better both in terms of volume of order intake and share of exports,” Balexco general manager Mohamed Mahmood Mohamed told the Gulf Industry magazine in an exclusive interview.

“We are quite upbeat and bullish about the company’s performance in the next three years, and to stay ahead and to strengthen further our presence in the market, we have launched Balexco 2020,” Mohamed revealed.

PRODUCTION ON A ROLL

“Going by the trend we are all set to overtake the sales figure of 2016 by a healthy margin. This has been made possible by approaching new customers and diversification approach from the traditional door, window commercial profiles to industrial profiles.

“Our endeavour is to carve out our own niche in the industrial profiles which are mostly preferred profiles for extrusion due to high weight per metre and higher wall thickness,” he said.

Mohamed: upbeat and bullish

The company, established in 1977, has an annual production capacity of 33,000 tonnes. Backed by four press lines, it is an integrated plant with extrusion, powder coating and anodizing lines all within one premises to provide end-to-end solutions to the customers.

CAPACITY EXPANSION

Talking about the company’s focus for the next year, Mohamed said that the company is looking at increasing its total production to full capacity utilisation of its plant.

Additionally, Balexco is all set to launch the commercial operation of its state-of-the-art vertical powder coating plant, a major plant enhancement investment made by the company in 2017.

The plant, which features the latest visual recognition system (VRS) technology, will not only increase its production capacity but will also provide enhanced quality product.

“The latest VRS technology will help in having consistency in powder quality over a period of time as the profiles are automatically detected and the powder coating consistency is automatically loaded,” Mohamed explained.

The new plant will increase Balexco’s powder coating capacity by about 300 per cent

The new plant, is expected to increase Balexco’s powder coating capacity by about 300 per cent.

“This enhanced production capacity plan is in line with our business plan to meet the new challenges and to ensure that Balexco remains committed as one-stop destination for aluminium extruded products,” he added.

The company has already made a foray into the industrial application profiles to garner a share of the fast developing industrial aluminium profiles. 

“This year we are concentrating on increasing the volume in new architectural system profiles as per project requirement and hence we plan to set-up a new thermal break system profiles in Balexco 60 series and 100 series,” he added.

These profiles are required to promote the Green Building Concept and to reduce the carbon footprint as their function is to reduce the energy so it’s vital to consolidate our position in the fast emerging new market, he said.

PRODUCT DIVERSIFICATION

A volume-based business, commercial profiles at present constitute major part of Balexco’s total sales. According to Mohamed, these have wide acceptance in the market as they are mostly architectural door, window profiles. “We receive regular order placement for such profiles from our key traders,” he said.

However, Balexco believes that diversification from architectural profiles to industrial applications will further provide the impetus to the growth of the extrusion industry.

The number two slot, Mohamed said, goes to Balexco System profiles which were designed and tested in Europe and are well accepted in the GCC market. As a system supplier, Balexco has good position in the GCC construction industry.

Lastly, for its Kitchen profiles, Balexco said it is continuously upgrading its product portfolio by adding new sections as per the market demand in order to sustain itself in the highly competitive, price conscious and evolving market.

The company boasts of having a wide variety of profiles duly tested for their performance and available in many options. “Also our system profiles are easy to fabricate and install and is a value-for-money proposition,” Mohamed said.
 

EXPORTS PUSH

According to Mohamed, Balexco usually exports around 70 per cent of its output to markets within the region, while the remaining 30 per cent is consumed locally. 

Balexco, he added, has been an export-oriented unit and has always been focused on expanding its sales base in the Mena region.