Graham Corp awarded four orders for three petrochem projects in USA and China

13-Feb-14

Graham Corporation, a global business that engineers, manufactures, and sells critical equipment for the oil refining, petrochemical and power industries, and also supplies components and raw materials for nuclear energy facilities, announced that it was recently awarded four orders for three projects valued at approximately $5 million. The projects are for the petrochemical markets in the U.S. and China and are expected to ship during the next 9 to 12 months. The two U.S. orders are for new petrochemical production facilities in the Gulf Coast region, specifically an ethylene plant and a propane dehydrogenation plant. Recent investments in U.S. petrochemical capacity have been driven by the abundance of low cost natural gas and natural gas liquids from the development of shale formations. As a result, petrochemical feedstock production costs have been reduced significantly, which in turn has created an improved competitive landscape for the U.S. petrochemical market. James R. Lines, Graham's President and Chief Executive Officer, commented, "We have considerable presence in the U.S. petrochemical industry and continue to experience strong bidding activity for new or expanded production capacity, particularly for ethylene, methanol and ammonia. These feedstocks in turn drive many other downstream production facilities that can also present opportunities for our equipment. We believe our proven capabilities, long-term experience and large installed base have driven our dominant U.S. market share to date for surface condensers and ejector systems in this current expansion cycle." The two orders for the project in China are also for a new petrochemical plant. Mr. Lines noted, "We engineered an innovative surface condenser to provide improved facility efficiency for our customer. This order follows the successful operation of our first installation of similar specialized equipment in China two years ago." He concluded, "Given current market dynamics, the strongest demand for our products recently has come from the North American chemical/petrochemical markets. Nonetheless, the active bids included in our $800 million to $1 billion pipeline are for diverse geographies and end markets. We believe the active bids in our pipeline demonstrates the breadth of our potential growth opportunities."