Ozbal Celik Boru aims to sell $500 million worth of steel pipes to Nabucco

Turkish steel pipe producer Ozbal Celik Boru aims to achieve sales of $500 million in the next four years by supplying 15 percent of the $3.5 billion worth of steel pipes to be used in the $11 billion Nabucco gas pipeline project.
 
Ozbal's chairman Yucehan Ozture said that they are planning to close 2011 with a turnover of TRY 108 million ($57.8 million) and that they aim to increase the number of countries to which they export to 30 in 2012 within the scope of the projects they carry out in a wide area from Algeria to Norway and from Qatar to Mexico. Ozbal carried out projects worth $18 million in total in Qatar, Algeria and Norway in 2011.
 
Mr. Ozture said that Europe, whose infrastructure needs renovation, and the North African countries going through the ‘Arab Spring' stand out in the company's turnover target of TRY 130 million ($69.5 million) set for 2012. Ozbal Celik Boru, which was among Turkey's top 600 exporters in 2010, has a market share of 19 percent in the domestic spiral welded pipe market and a 10 percent share in Turkey's pipe export market, according to the data for the first six months of 2011.
 
Additionally, Mr. Ozture stressed that, since the company is not stocking inventory, it is not experiencing the difficulties the industry is going through because of the constantly changing raw material prices. Ozbal Celik Boru, he said, builds up inventory according to the scope of orders received, and therefore is not affected by the prices differences caused by exchange rate changes.
 
As SteelOrbis previously reported, Ozbal Celik Boru has commissioned its third steel pipe manufacturing plant, doubling its annual welded steel pipe production capacity to 150,000 mt, and it is among the six Turkish companies that have received compliance certificates for the Nabucco natural gas pipeline project.