One of Saudi Arabia’s leading pipe and valve coating companies is set for a major expansion that will double capacity within two years.
The expansion at Al-Qahtani Pipe Coating Terminal comes in the wake of large projects undertaken for companies including Aramco and expectations of additional orders from within Saudi Arabia and beyond, said a spokesman of the company.
The expansion will take coating capacity to around 50 km of pipes per day from the current level of 20 to 25 km.
More than 70 per cent of Al-Qahtani’s business comes from Saudi Aramco projects and one of the major projects that Al-Qahtani is currently implementing is Aramco’s KCC-Khurais where it has coated some 700 km of pipelines in the last year and a half with another 300-400 km still to go.
One of the highpoints at Al-Qahtani was the coating of more than 35 Italian-made 60-inch dia gate valves for contractor Saipem and eventual user Aramco.
“Big ovens, sophisticated handling cranes and, of course, expertise made it possible to complete successfully that order,” the spokesman commented.
The company has successfully completed projects in the Middle East, North Africa and South-east Asia. It is a key player in the GCC region for large projects involving Saline Water Conversion Corporation (SWCC), Kuwait Oil Company, Petroleum Development Oman and Qatar Petroleum, besides Saudi Aramco. 
Al-Qahtani Pipe Coating Terminal, established in Saudi Arabia in 1962 by the late Sheikh Abdel Hadi Al-Qahtani, is a family owned enterprise, part of the Abdel Hadi Abdullah Al-Qahtani & Sons group of companies.
The company is an exclusive agent for Valve Italia and Tuboscope Coatings,Germany.
The business now has three facilities, two in Dammam and one in Yanbu. Each has several production lines and can perform various coaing applications simultaneously. Services include fusion-bonded epoxy and three-layer polyethyle coating.
The company has also enjoyed success as a custom coater.
“Al-Qahtani Pipe Coating was the first in Saudi Arabia and the Middle East to apply three-layer polyethylene coating on 80-inch diameter pipes for an SWCC water pipeline project,” the spokesman said.  “It was a technological achievement to be able to perform such a difficult coating on a very large diameter pipe in accordance with stringent specifications. By this success, clients such as SWCC are not relieved of past design constraints and can now design their future projects based on this higher diameter coating capability of Al-Qahtani. Three-layer polyethylene or polypropylene can be applied to pipe sizes ranging from 3-inch and up to 80-inch diameter.
 The company also offers specialised coating including applied coating on internal and external surfaces of tube bundles, vessels and tanks (to prevent fouling and incrustation).
Al-Qahtani claims it was the first to offer Sakaphen coating technology in the Middle East.
In addition to coating applications, the company has facilities for double jointing (welding of two pipe sections into one), fabrication (cutting beveling and welding) and remedial services. The services are provided at the company’s facilities or on site.
The fabrication division, approved by Saudi Aramco, manufactures high-integrity piping systems for refineries, petrochemical, gas processing and chemical plants, offshore production complexes and desalination and water plants. The fabrication workshop works with  carbon steel, low-temperature alloy steel, chrome molybdenum and stainless steel and uses processes including manual, semi and automatic gas tungsten arc welding, automatically submerged arc welding, shielded metal arc welding and flux cored arc welding as well as standard welding technology.
“Al-Qahtani is the first and only one to perform pipeline rehabilitation projects in the Middle East,” a company text claims. “It developed its own spread of line travel equipment for hydro-blast cleaning, sand pre-blasting, grit blasting and spray coating of the external surface of pipe.”
It added that pipelines where tape coatings or similar coatings had failed are field rehabilitated while in service or out of service using in-situ techniques to remove failed coatings such as tape wraps or other external coatings and reapplied with liquid coatings such as coal tar and polyurethane.