The storm weathered, Whessoe has wind in its sails

THE ambitions of a famous North-East engineering firm can be summed up by an A4 document which hangs on the wall of its boardroom.

On the day that I visit Darlington-based Whessoe, it feels like the office windows are on the verge of yielding to 80mph winds whipping in from the North York Moors.

“Yesterday, we could feel the building swaying slightly from side to side,” says Steve Kim, Whessoe chief executive, whose huge grin indicates his supreme confidence that we are not about to topple into the storage yard of nearby Cleveland Bridge.

The first storage tank built by Whessoe for the Anglo American Oil Company Ltd, which was Esso's name in 1894. The tank’s capacity was 1,000,000 gallons

A battering from the elements is a pretty apt metaphor for Whessoe’s recent history.

Once one of the jewels of North-East engineering, the company which played a pivotal role in nearly every major industrial milestone, from the railway revolution to the nuclear age, was on its knees a year ago.

It is fair to say that without Samsung C&T’s investment the Whessoe story – which began in William Kitching’s ironmonger’s shop in 1790 – would probably have ended in 2013.

The Al Rushaid Group, the largest oil and gas service company in the Middle East, had bought Whessoe in 2004, but appeared to lose interest in the Darlington firm which had become an expert in designing huge industrial storage tanks for liquefied natural gas (LNG).

At its peak Whessoe had employed thousands of workers across the region, but by the time a division of technology multinational Samsung completed a buy-out last March, the firm had only 57 people working at its Yarm Road offices.

By the end of this year, those numbers are likely to have trebled, as a combination of Samsung’s global clout and the North- East’s reputation for engineering know how steadily restore Whessoe’s fortunes.

“Right now I have 50 design engineers up to their necks in work, and I need 50 more,”

says Mr Kim, who points to a document on the wall which confirms that Whessoe has recently won accreditation to build the biggest LNG storage tank in the world.

At 260,000m3 it would have the capacity to house three 747 jumbo jets. More importantly, if Whessoe gets the go ahead to build one of that size for a client in Singapore, it will send a message that the firm has not just survived, but it is determined to once again be a global industry leader.

The Whessoe works in January 1970, when it covered 38 acres

Since last year’s takeover it has been winning contracts around the world.

The design team at Darlington has been working on a 90,000m3 LNG storage tank on the islet of Revithoussa, in the Gulf of Megara, west of Athens. The Greece deal will expand a facility which Whessoe originally worked on about 15 years ago.

“A lot of the work are repeat orders from former customers who recognise the quality that Whessoe can deliver,” says Mr Kim, who stresses that his strategy is about building long-term relationships with customers.

WITH Samsung’s backing, he has a vision for Whessoe to grow steadily over the next decade. The firm is about to sign a contract to design a 30,000cm3 facility for a project in China, and it is doing feasibility studies in the UK.

Mr Kim and his team are also pursuing deals in Africa and the Middle East, and are in talks with clients in North America.

The staff at Whessoe work solely on designs which are then built by contractors across the world. “My vision is to make Whessoe the brain centre for Samsung C&T,”

says Mr Kim. “There is very stiff competition, with five or six world-class companies bidding for any given job. But we are doing very well.

“The history of Whessoe is steeped in LNG engineering.

People value our talents and our know how. That is why we are beating big, blue chip companies to some of these contracts.

“When it comes to LNG there are two distinct markets. In areas such as China and Far East Asia, they need LNG to power their industry. In the likes of the US and Mozambique it’s about storing LNG for the export market. We service both the exporters and the importers, and there are significant opportunities in both.”

The Revithoussa project in the Gulf of Megara, near Athens, where Whessoe has been working on a 90,000m3 LNG storage tank

By significant opportunities he means multi-billion dollar deals for Samsung, which in turn delivers contracts worth millions to the Darlington business.

Andy Beedle, from Brotton, east Cleveland, who heads Whessoe’s business development division, says: “Having the credibility of Samsung has been a game changer for us here. It gives us opportunities where we otherwise just wouldn’t have got through the door.

“If a firm is spending hundreds of millions of pounds on a new project, are they going to come to a small North-East company with our balance sheet? No, they are not. They are going to want guarantees in terms of financial clout and stability.

Samsung gives us that. We give them credibility in the LNG markets, it’s a great combination. We have some international-class people here.

“Instead of being an 80-man engineering operation in Darlington, we are part of the biggest company in Korea.”

THE tie-up with Samsung also means the Darlington offices can draw on some of the best IT software in the world. A new project management system will be installed later this year which the Korean company uses to manage multi-billion dollar projects end-to-end.

The involvement of the parent company could not be more different to the absentee landlord approach which marked Al Rushaid’s tenure.

Every quarter a senior team from Samsung C&T visits the Darlington offices. There are daily telephone and video conferences, and staff from Darlington visit Korea to ensure what Mr Kim calls “a continual dialogue and transfer of information back and forth”.

The need for more staff has seen the firm rehire skilled staff who jumped ship when Whessoe was on the slide.

Plans are also in place to start a sponsored graduate training programme next year.

“As we grow, we may have to look further afield, but for the most part we are recruiting locally,” says Mr Kim.

“We have managed to bring back some of the shining stars who left when the company was going down the tubes three of four years ago.

Rebuilding that core team has been one of my key objectives.

Whessoe’s storage tanks at the Dragon LNG terminal in Milford Haven, Wales, completed in 2008

“We have come a long way over the last year. But there is so much more to do. These are very exciting times for Whessoe.”