London deal was crucial for Binder

TEN years ago, Kewdale company Binder Group was staring into the abyss, but one crucial export contract laid the groundwork for its current success in the international energy industry.

Binder's growth illustrates the potential for small Western Australian companies to carve a niche in the global marketplace.

Established 26 years ago by Brett Dentith, Binder designs, manufactures and distributes pipe supports, pipe hangers and pipe suspension equipment.

Group managing director Paul Bennett said the organisation now exported its products to a vast number of oil and gas projects in Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

"I can't think of a place in the world where we haven't supplied our pipe supports. From small orders to big orders, we are genuinely a global supplier," Mr Bennett told WA Business News.

While designing is an integral part of Binder's service, the vast majority of its work (about 90 per cent) involves manufacturing products designed by the customer.

This is especially true of the larger organisations the company has been involved with, including the Woodside-operated North West Shelf Venture. More than $12 million worth of products were supplied by Binder Group for its 'train 4' expansion. This remains one of the company's largest contracts to date.

"We're obviously very proud and we couldn't do it if it wasn't for our factory in Indonesia, which is clearly the facility that enables us to export around the world," Mr Bennett said.

The bulk of manufacturing takes place at its 50 per cent-owned factory in Indonesia, with the remainder coming from its wholly owned Kewdale premises.

However, there was a time during the 1997 Asian financial crisis when the company seriously considered closing its Indonesian factory.

"Literally overnight, we had no orders for our Indonesian plant," Mr Bennett said.

A lot of hard work ensured the business survived.

"At that stage Leo Crohan [a director and shareholder] was running marketing out of Indonesia, so we brought Leo to Perth and with a scattergun marketing approach, plenty of elbow grease and many nights spent in roach motels we turned it around," he said.

"This wasn't the only challenge we faced, in fact there were several, and the main global challenge was being taken seriously in the marketplace.

"But we gained credibility thanks to a deal struck with (engineering company) Kellogg in London, worth about three million (US) dollars, supplying pipe supports to the third train of the Nigerian LNG project.

"We leveraged that experience in our favour and from then on when we were asked 'What's your experience? What have you done?' we were able to say 'We're doing this for Kellogg!'

"That was invaluable. No doubt."

Binder also needed to change the culture of business and implement systems to streamline and improve performance.

"Honestly, I underestimated the timelines required to implement these changes, and it was ignorance on my part simply because I didn't know," Mr Bennett said.

"But since then we've significantly changed the culture of the business thanks to dramatic staff turnover, with only two people remaining from the organisation as it existed a decade ago, and we now have a good bunch of people."

With good people surrounding him, Mr Bennett is focussing on the oil and gas sector for future growth of the business.

"Our most important industry is LNG and the second is power generation," he said.

"It's been hard work establishing ourselves. I mean anyone can make a widget, so relationship marketing and developing relations has been vital.

"And in the future, if we don't continue to evolve we'll lose out."