ESTABLISHED in 1948, the Dammam-based Al Mutawa Holding is aiming to build its group into one of the biggest diversified conglomerates in Saudi Arabia.

The group aims to achieve this by enhancing its existing business by entering into joint ventures with competent partners that could add value to its business, says Abdulghaffar Al Mutawa, owner and vice president for support services, Al Mutawa Holding.

Growing steadily over the years, Al Mutawa has, in fact, increased its revenues by about 15 per cent in the last year. “The business for the past year was good. We had about 15 per cent increases in our revenues,” says Al Mutawa.

Following a recent restructuring of its operations, the group has converted from a partnership firm to a closed joint stock company and brought all its major subsidiaries under the fold of the holding company Al Mutawa Holding. The group has also introduced new lines of business such as smelter support services and food trading and is now looking at tapping the solar energy sector in Saudi Arabia, as well. “We are also keen in observing the developments in solar energy industry which are going around in the kingdom,” adds Al Mutawa.

The group’s main activities are spread across varied sectors including industrial instrumentation; non-destructive testing (NDT) and inspection services; engineering and civil construction; retail pharmacy and supply of medical equipment; restaurants and catering services; manufacturing of glass reinforced plastic (GRP) and others.

PRIME PROJECTS
According to Al Mutawa, the group has in its span of over 60 years successfully completed thousands of projects with reputed clients such as Saudi Aramco, Sabic, Marafiq, Maaden and others. “We have been dealing in services such as operation and maintenance, engineering, contractions, catering, supplying products and industrial services,” he adds.

One of the most recent projects completed by the Al Mutawa group was ACP-Cascade project-Saudi Kayan which started in January this year and will be completed by the end of this month.

The scope of work involved in this project was the erection, testing of instruments and laying of electrical cables. The challenge in implementing the project was the short completion time period and high quality standards set by Saudi Kayan, says Al Mutawa.

“The quality standards set by the client (Saudi-Kayan) were met by enforcing highly qualified and experienced team of engineers and technicians,” he adds.

Also, for the first time, the group has been awarded a new project with Saudi Aramco for a period of eight years with two years extension. The nature of this project is providing general services, housekeeping and gardening. “The interesting part of this project is the duration and the mobilisation time which is one year from the signing date,” says Al Mutawa. 

In addition, Al Mutawa says that the group is currently participating in several biddings that are worth of SR700 million ($70.36 million) in the kingdom and it is expected to finalise some of them within a couple of months.

IPO & SAUDISATION
Going forward, the group plans to go public and raise funds through an initial public offering (IPO) in the kingdom as well as recruit more Saudis in its team.

“We are planning to go for an IPO after five years from now. During this period we will be seriously working on enhancing the executive management team and strengthening the existing businesses to attract investors,” says Al Mutawa.

“Moreover, we are focusing on hiring Saudis for key positions as we believe there are quite a good number of competent Saudis. Therefore, we are now putting more efforts in searching for Saudis and hope after five years we would be having a very distinguished team,” he adds.

The total manpower of Al Mutawa at present is approaching 3,000. It has three main offices in Saudi Arabia located in Dammam, Al Khobar and Jubail. It also has offices in Qatar and Oman for the business of NDT and inspections services.