Scott Miller, CEO and Sales & Marketing Director
“These new premises are our global centre of excellence for well services, business development and decommissioning, which offers us huge growth potential for the near future. It also ties in seamlessly with our current ESG responsibilities, which is a big focus area for us as we’re striving to decommission assets in a safe way, preventing methane leaking into the atmosphere from wells around the world.
“With an increasing volume of decommissioning taking place in the North Sea, our core area of geographical business growth is in the Middle East, with expansion potential in ESG style chemistry such as green scale inhibitors. We’re also building a new manufacturing facility in Saudi Arabia which we’re developing with local intel. This, in addition to our new headquarters in Bridge of Don, will allow us to add significant value to our customers in this region.
“As part of the new premises opening, we’ve heavily invested in new equipment. For instance, we’ve developed our P&A chemistry to mothball when it comes to decommissioning - essentially where we preserve equipment from decommissioned assets for future use. This means we’re decommissioning in a more natural way and can test equipment effectively and prove the chemistry in different scenarios before deploying it globally, whether that’s in the North Sea or Brazil.
“It’s our environmental focus and unique patented technology like this - which has been approved by OEUK guidelines - that makes our offering highly disruptive within the market. Our competitors still provide more traditional solutions, whereas we establish a dynamic scale loop to complete traditional scale testing for traditional inhibitor businesses. We’re now doubling down on this core area of business, while looking to expand with new technology in our new facility.
“Finally, opening our new headquarters has meant there’s been a heavy focus on the team. We hired Marc Archibald, a scale specialist, at the start of 2023 to head up our local scale presence but also lead the P&A technology side of the business. He’s been a great addition to the team and our intention is to continue growing the team with more graduates and focus on succession management.
“Overall, the new headquarters also gives us a central point of excellence across our global locations, as we now have our team of experts, state-of-the-art equipment and testing facilities for well services located in one central hub.”
Kevin Lonie, Regional Sales Manager, Europe
“This new base will be the head office for Italmatch Oil & Gas in the Eastern Hemisphere, which demonstrates our commitment to the oil and gas sector and the region of Aberdeen. The office space will be a hub of excellence in terms of laboratory capabilities, with a central base for the technical and sales support team. This will provide our local customers with the opportunity to visit the facilities and use the laboratory for specific testing requirements when it comes to cementing, stimulation, plug and abandonment and flow assurance testing.
“I am most excited about the opportunity to develop and manage the European sales team as we see the business continue to grow. There will be ongoing opportunities for growth, particularly with our innovative new ESG offerings. Now that we have access to manufacturing locations based all around the world, we have the ability to explore new geographies, connect with potential new customers and support all their chemical requirements - which is very exciting.
“I can only see a prosperous future for the team from an Italmatch Oil & Gas perspective. In every department - whether its sales, supply chain or finance - there will be opportunities for people to progress into senior management roles to help the business expand further. We are already seeing individuals moving into global technical roles, and they will have a major role to play within the global team for developing new innovations and technologies.”
Marc Archibald, Global Technical Development Manager
“I think the new base provides an excellent opportunity. Although the Aubin site had served as an excellent base for many years, the move to a new Italmatch location is an important milestone in the transition process following the acquisition last year. The new location allows us to be positioned much closer to our customer base and maintain a close relationship through regular meetings and being able to demonstrate our technical capabilities in person.
“From a technical perspective, the new lab premises provides an opportunity to consolidate and update some of the Aubin legacy equipment to suit the needs of the business and the new space, while also allowing Italmatch to create a technology hub within the energy capital of Europe. Italmatch is establishing a footprint in the area at a critical time when the energy transition takes centre stage, opening the door to offshore technologies in renewables, carbon capture and decommissioning.
"The Aubin lab in Ellon was a vital resource in the development of new products and supporting the onsite manufacturing capability, however it was geared mainly towards testing the established cement and fluid loss additives product lines. This continues to be an important part of the business, but the development of mineral scale-based technologies such as Aubin® Xclude, Aubin® Xmax and our well technology product range, meant that a move was required in order to adapt. The new facility means we can add to our technical capabilities to support these new products, directing us towards implementing industry standard testing based around oilfield scale within the Aberdeen site.
“A new laboratory space is always an exciting prospect for the technical team, and whilst we have maintained much of the technical capabilities from the previous site, there is a drive to expand these further to capture testing requirements of both new product line development and the expanded product range which has been introduced following the acquisition by Italmatch.
“Increased testing capability and new equipment will provide the opportunity for some team members to learn new techniques, while others can share their knowledge and experience. The implementation of Dynamic Scale Loop and Core Flood test capability will not only promote continued development, and allow for project specific qualification testing, it also gives Italmatch increased capability in the testing and development of the scale inhibitor product range for our customers.”
Foort De Jong, Director Subsidiaries & Projects
“It’s been a very positive experience coming into the Italmatch family and integrating into the existing structure of the company. Everyone has been very open to changes as we’ve moved from being one small company, to now being a strong team specialised in oil and gas, grasping global opportunities when they present themselves.
“There are many team members who are now in quite different roles to when they started, but bringing the Aubin heritage and global Italmatch business together enables both personal and professional growth, and allows each person to leverage their skills to help the overall business.
I’m excited about the next chapter as we open our new office and lab, which will present a real oil and gas flagship for Italmatch in the Eastern Hemisphere. Oil and gas was previously North Atlantic centric, but creating a balance between East and West hemispheres is a journey that we’re well on our way along, and it’s happened faster than we anticipated, thanks to the team’s efforts.”
