Cameron: The plant in Ploiesti will generate 200m-dollar revenues

US Cameron, a group with 6bn-dollar turnover, specialising in equipment and services for the oil industry, says the new production facility opened in Ploiesti has the capacity to generate turnover worth 200m dollars during its first operational year, delivering equipment exclusively for export to world giants such as ExxonMobil (US), Statoil (Norway) or British Petroleum.

The investment of Ploiesti was finalised two weeks ago, with construction works having been started around a year and a half ago.

Cameron invested 80m dollars in this facility, which it hopes to recoup in three to four years, and it has created 300 jobs, of which 120 are already filled. For the rest of 180 jobs, around 30-40 candidates vie per position.

“I believe around 200-300 people worked for this project, and the contractors were firms of Romania. At any rate, it’s more difficult to build a plant from scratch than rehabilitate a new one,” stated Marius Tripsa, general manager of Cameron Romania, in the context where the US group has been present on the domestic market since 2004 after having bought the old oil equipment plant Sterom Campina.

“We have adapted to a continuously rising market, that of exploration in increasingly tougher environments. We’re practically completed this investment at the right moment,” believes Tripsa. At Sterom Campina, Cameron last year derived turnover worth above 200m dollars.

According to Tripsa, there were several countries that competed with Romania for the new production facility, but there were several factors that tipped the balance for Ploiesti. “In Romania we’re registered very good results at Sterom, we know we had a very good workforce from which we could choose the future employees, and local authorities were on our side. Since 2004, when we took over Sterom, we’ve brought around 40m dollars, and the productivity of the 850 employees we have has tripled during this period,” Tripsa specified.

The US group says the old plant in Campina will not be closed in the wake of investments in Ploiesti, because the two production facilities are complementary.

Beyond the wave of optimism generated by the opening of the new plant, Tripsa admits the economic downturn has had an unexpectedly big impact over the facility in Campina. He believes the market will rebound in 2010, but not to the 2008 level.